
Class -fiR^a 



Book 






Gopyriglit}^°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



English Writers 



BY 

R. V. Gilbert 



FACTS ABOUT THE LIFE 
AND WORK OF ALL ENGLISH 
WRITERS, BOTH OF PROSE 
AND POETRY ARE GIVEN HERE 



philadelphia 
The Penn Publishing Company 

1913 






Copyright 1913 by The Penn Publishing Company 



©CI.A.34 7955 



This book is dedicated 

to 

my Father a7id Mother 

by whose ufts elfish lives 

and tintiring efforts it 

was made possible 



Preface 

Cheonology and brevity have been the ends 
sought for in writing this little volume. It is 
assumed that for a beginner a bird's-eye view of 
the subject is the end most to be sought for, and 
that having attained this, he is free to specialize 
and master details. Too often in approaching a 
subject like literature we become confused with 
details and lose ourselves in a labyrinth from 
which we are extracted only at the expense of 
much time and effort. Too often, also, teachers 
permit, nay compel, preparatory students to do 
the same thing by placing in their hands a text- 
book where the general and important lines of 
thought are not sufficiently differentiated from the 
minutiae to become impressed upon the mind. 

This book is an effort to eliminate such con- 
fusion. It grew from notes the author used — in 
the failure to find a suitable text-book — while 
teaching literature. If it will in any way help 
teachers similarly situated, and prove useful to 
those not students, in the strict sense of the term, 

5 



6 PREFACE 

who have been debarred from studying litera- 
ture because the subject appeared too large and 
complicated, the labors spent in preparing this 
book will be considered amply rewarded. 

Due acknowledgment is hereby given to Pan- 
coast for the scheme of dividing the history of 
English Literatm^e into the four given divisions. 
I desire fm*ther to acknowledge the aid given 
by Long's excellent English Literature^ Halleck's 
History of English Literature, Moulton's Library 
of Literary Criticism, and the inspirmg lectures 
of eminent men on the subject. 

I desire also to express my thanks to Prof. 
Luther B. Henderson, A. M., B. D., and Prof. 
Thomas L. Cline, A. M., for valuable assistance 
given in correcting and revising the manuscript. 

R. V. G. 



Contents 

CHAPTEE I 
Period of Peepaeation 

1. Introduction : The Anglo-Saxons . . 15 

2. The Beowulf 19 

3. Geof6-ey Chaucer (1340-1400) ... 23 

CHAPTEE II 
Period of Italian Influence 

4. The Else of the Drama .... 30 

5. If on- Dramatic Writers of the Elizabethan 

Age 34 

6. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) . . 37 

7. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) . . 41 

8. From Elizabeth to Charles ... 47 

9. John Milton (1608-1674) . .- . . 51 

10. John Bunyan (1628-1688) ... 56 

CHAPTEE III 

Period of French Influence 

11. John Dryden (1631-1700) ... 60 

12. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) ... 64 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

13. The Else of the Novel .... 67 

14. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) ... 70 

CHAPTEE IV 
Modern Period {The Bomantic Movement) 

15. Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) . . 74 

16. Thomas Grey (1716-1771) ... 78 

17. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) . . 81 

18. William Oowper (1731-1800) ... 82 

19. Eobert Burns (1759-1796) ... 87 

20. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) . . 93 

CHAPTEE V 
Modern Period (The Bomantic Movement, Con- 
tinued) 

21. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) . 98 

22. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) . . .102 

23. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) . 106 

24. Thomas DeQuincey (1785-1859) . . 108 

25. George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1788-1824) 112 

26. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) . . 117 

27. John Keats (1795-1821) . , . .124 

CHAPTEE VI 

The Victorian Age 

(a) The Prose Writers 

28. The Victorian Age 129 

29. Thomas Oarlyle (1795-1881) . . .132 



CONTENTS 9 

30. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) 135 

31. John Euskin (1819-1900) . . .138 

32. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) . . .141 

CHAPTER VII 

The Victorian Age {Continued) 

(6) The Poets 



33. 
34. 
35. 
36. 


Alfred (Lord) Tennyson (1809-1892) 
Eobert Browning (1812-1889) . 
Algernon C. Swinburne (1837-1909) 
Eudyard Kipling (1865- ) . 

OHAPTBE VIII 

English Novelists 

{From Smollett to Stevenson) 


. 146 
. 155 
. 161 
. 166 


37. 


Conclusion 

Index 


. 179 

. 184 



List of Writers and Dates 



I. Period of Preparation 

Caedmon Cir. 670 

Cynewulf . 

Bede, The Venerable 



King Alfred 
Layamon . 
Sir Jolin Mandeville 
William Langiand 
John Wycliffe . 
Geoffrey Chaucer 
William Caxton 



673-735 

Cir. 851-901 
Cir. 1205 

1300-1372 (?) 

1322-1400 (!) 
1324-1384 
1340-1400 

1422 (?)-1492 



II. Period of Italian Influence 



Sir Thomas Malory 
Sir Thomas More 
Thomas Sackville 
Edmund Spenser 
Eichard Hooker 
Sir Philip Sidney 
Thomas Kidd . 
Francis Bacon . 
Christopher Marlowe 
William Shakespeare 
John Donne 
Ben Jonson 



1430-1496 (?) 
1478-1535 
1536-1608 
1552-1599 
1554-1600 
1554-1586 
1557-1596 
1561-1626 
1564-1593 
1564-1616 
1573-1631 

1573 (?)-1637 



^ This is a modification of an Outline by the Author, pubhshed by 
C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y. 

11 



12 



ENGLISH WRITERS 



Beaumont ) 
Fletcher j 
Philip Massinger 
John Milton 
Samuel Butler . 
John Bunyan 



15S4-1616 
1579-1625 
1584-1640 
1608-1674 
1612-1680 
1628-1688 



III. Period of French Influence 



John Dryden 
Daniel De Foe . 
Jonathan Swift . 
Sir Richard Steele 
Joseph Addison 
Alexander Pope 
Samuel Richardson 
Henry Fielding 
Dr. Samuel Johnson 



1631-1700 
1659-1731 
1617-1745 
1672-1729 
1672-1719 
1688-1774 
1689-1761 
1707-1754 
1709-1784 



IV. Modern Period 
(A) The Romantic Movement 



James Thomson 
Lawrence Sterne 
Thomas Grey 
William Collins 
Tobias Smollett 
Oliver Goldsmith 
William Cowper 
James Macpherson 
James Boswell . 
Thomas Chatterton 
George Crabbe . 



1700-1748 
1713-1768 
1716-1771 
1721-1759 
1721-1771 
1728-1774 
1731-1800 
1736-1796 
1740-1795 
1752-1770 
1757-1827 



ENGLISH WRITERS 



13 



Eobert Burns . 
William Wordsworth 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
Sir Walter Scott 
Walter Savage Landor 
Charles Lamb . 
Jane Austen 
Thomas De Quincey . 
Lord Byron 
Percy Bysshe Shelley 
John Keats 



(B) Victorian Age 
1. The Peosb Weitees 

Thomas Carlyle 

Thomas Babington Macaulay 

John ISTewman . 

Bulwer-Lytton , 

William Makepeace Thackeray 

Charles Dickens 

Charlotte Bronte 

Emily Bronte . 

James Froude . 

George Eliot 

John Euskin 

Matthew Arnold 

George Meredith 

John Green 

Eobert Louis Stevenson 

Henry Drummond . 



2. Poets 



Elizabeth Barrett 



1759-1795 

1770-1850 
1772-1834 
1771-1832 
1775-1864 
1775-1834 
1775-1817 
1785-1859 
1788-1824 
1792-1822 
1795-1821 



1795-1881 
1800-1859 
1801-1890 
1803-1873 
1811-1863 
1812-1870 
1816-1855 
1818-1848 
1818-1894 
1819-1880 
1819-1900 
1822-1888 
1828-1909 
1837-1883 
1850-1894 
1851-1897 



1806-1861 



14 



ENGLISH WRITERS 



Lord Tennyson . 
Eobert Browning 
Arthur Clougli . 
Jean Ingelow 
Carey Sisters 
Adelaide Proctor 
Dante Gabriel Eossetti 
Christina Eossetti 
William Morris 
Algernon Swinburne 
Walter Pater 
Eudyard Kipling 



1809-1892 
1812-1889 
1819-1861 
1820-1897 
1820-24-1871 
1825-1864 
1828-1882 
1830-1894 
1834-1896 
1837-1909 
1838-1894 
1865- 



English Writers 

CHAPTER I 

PEEIOD OF PEEPAEATION 

I. Introduction^ : The Ais-OLO-SAXOiSrs. 

The question is being daily asked among 
linguists. Why is it that the English language, 
heterogeneous and irregular as it is, when com- 
pared with other tongues, is to-day fast becoming 
the world language ? Equally well might the 
sociologist inquire why it is that English customs, 
English inventions, and English wares are being- 
appropriated everywhere. Likewise may the stu- 
dent of literature wonder why the poetry and 
prose of the English-speaking races by far eclipses 
the literary productions of the other races of the 
world ; why no othei nation has produced a Shake- 
speare, a Milton, or a Tennyson. To answer these 
questions we must go back to the peat-bogs and 
fenlands of northern Germany, and Jutland, — 

15 



16 ENGLISH WRITERS 

the home of the Angles, the Saxons, and the 
Jutes. 

The physical and mental world presents some 
strange facts. One great law is, that the greater 
the obstacle the greater the success. The refining 
fire purifies gold ; the u'ritation of the oyster forms 
the pearl; the fierce wind-storms toughen the 
giant oak. The great life is made greater by the 
obstacles thrown athwart its path, and genius 
succeeds never so well as patient, persevering 
work. 

It was so with the Anglo-Saxons. Perhaps no 
nation has been fated by fortune to inhabit so 
dreary a land. The country was marshy. The 
sky was ever lowering and overcast with clouds 
ready to drop their watery burden. Seldom, in- 
deed, does Nature display so dismal an aspect. 
The winters were long, cold, and rigorous. The 
sun set early, the long winter night beginning in 
mid -afternoon. Crouching before the fire, in his 
hut, through those long winter nights, the Anglo- 
Saxon had ample time to reflect how Nature had 
promised him much and given him little. Little 
did he know, little could he know, that he and his 
fellow tribesmen were being forged on the mighty 
anvil of the elements by an Omniscient Hand, and 



ENGLISH WEITERS 17 

that those latent elements of greatness were being 
moulded and tempered so that his posterity, thou- 
sands of years hence, would be fit for a world 
supremacy. 

But what immediate effect did this gloomy 
clunate have upon him ? Just that which might 
have been expected. It made the Anglo-Saxon 
a thinker, a philosopher. It gave his mind a 
somber cast and his expression a seriousness that 
was not found among other races, and which 
led the bard on the Avon more than a thousand 
years later to say 

** To be or not to be, that is the question." ^ 

And which caused the first great romantic poet 
of the nineteenth century to exclaim : 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
Hath elsewhere had its setting." 2 

But the Anglo-Saxon was more than a mere thinker 
or theorizer, he was a Man, with all that that im- 
plies. Physically almost a giant, he was brave, 
warlike, and adventurous. In the teeth of a gale 
he skimmed upon the sea, with his open boat. He 

* Hamlet* 2 Intimations of Immo7'tality, 



18 ENGLISH WRITERS 

laughed at fear. He was a buccaneer and a sav- 
age. And yet, hidden in the dark forests or al- 
most submerged in the morasses, he exhibited 
traits and virtues which Rome in the golden age 
of her civilization lacked. He respected and ex- 
alted woman; he loved his home, and over- 
shadowed it with a sacred halo of devotion. Brave, 
liberty-loving, and serious ; shaped by the anvil- 
strokes of a pitiless and inhospitable climate, the 
Anglo-Saxon faced the world to do or die. And 
it was that resolution that made the haughty 
Roman, in the gilded palace of the C^sars, trem- 
ble. It was that same spirit that, centuries after- 
ward, destroyed a Spanish Armada. It followed 
the Iron Duke and forever ended the career of the 
Man of Destiny on fatal "Waterloo. It showed 
itself in the trenches of Bunker Hill and the mis- 
ery of Valley Forge. It sailed unknown oceans, 
explored dark continents, and civilized nations. 

Realizing this we shall pursue our study of Eng- 
lish literature with a new and added interest, 
knowing that it is the expression of a mighty 
race, — a race that has surmounted great obstacles 
and faced tremendous issues, and, ultimately tri- 
umphant, has stamped the seal of its greatness 
upon the coinage of all humanity. We may fit- 



ENGLISH WRITERS 19 

tingly say with the poet, in closing this introduc- 
tion : 

" The Saxon legions conquer every foe. 

•X- ^ ^ * -K- -x- 

Our gauntlet at invaders shall be hurled ; 
Lords of the land and emperors of the sea, 
The Eagle and the Lion rule the world." ^ 

II. The Beowulf. 

It is a matter of historical note that a race pro- 
duces but one, or at most, two or three epics in its 
lifetime. And yet the study of the Beowulfhrings 
us face to face with the startling fact that the 
Anglo-Saxon race, not yet emancipated from the 
chains of barbarism, before the various concomi- 
tant forces that have made the race great had 
united, had produced an epic that ranks as one of 
the greatest epics of any language. 

After hundreds of years of civilization, the Hin- 
doos produce the Rig -Veda; after centuries of 
divine guidance, the Hebrews produce the Book 
of Job ; after a great lapse of time, and then by 
the aid of an Englishman, the Icelanders submit 
their national epic, the Kalevala ; but our race, 
like the legendary god Apollo, rises from its 

1 The Eagle and the Lion, by Walter Malone. 



20 ENGLISH ^yRITERS 

cradle, and, wrapped in its swaddling clothes, 
sings a world-epic with the hand of a master I 

The f ollovv^ing is the story in brief : Hrothgar^ 
king of the Danes, builds a magnificent mead-hali 
for his thanes and warriors to carouse in. The 
mead-hall is called Heorot. One night after the 
warriors have feasted and caroused their full, and 
are sleeping^ a monster, half man and half beast, 
named Grendel, comes stalkmg over the moor and 
entering the banqueting hall, slays thirty warriors 
and devours them. This occm^s night after night 
until no one dares to be at the mead-hall any 
longer, thi^ough fear of Grendel. The king was 
sorely perplexed as to what he could do. As one 
translator puts it : 

« Then seethed Hrothgar, helm of the Scyldings, 
For all his wisdom he could not avert the evil ; 
That strife was too strong, loathsome, and tedious, 
That came on the people, malice-brought misery, 
Greatest of night- woes." ^ 

But Beowulf, " king of the Wiedergeats,'' hears 
about it. He at once orders his ''wave-rider" 
{i. 6., ship) to be put in trim, and is soon skimming 
over the " whale-road " (sea) to fight the monster. 
The plans are soon arranged. Hrothgar is to 

1 Beou'ulf. 



ENGLISH WEITERS 21 

give a great feast as in the old times, and when 
Grendel comes, Beowulf will attack him. And 
so all things happen. In the dead of night, the 
bloodthirsty Grendel, all unsuspecting, comes, and 
Beowulf, disdaining a sword, grapples with him. 
Grendel, in the first onslaught, finds that he has 
met his master, and would gladly flee, but cannot. 
In the struggle which ensues massive tables are 
wrenched loose and overthrown, and the seasoned 
oak benches, inlaid with bone and ivory, are 
broken. Finally Grendel, in his efforts to get 
away, has his arm torn off, and flees to his den 
under the sea where he lives with his half-human 
mother. The next day Beowulf pursues him to 
his lair. Into this ghostly, dragon-infested lake 
Beowulf descends. After nine days he returns 
from the terrible conflict with Grendel's mother, 
with battered armor, but also with the head of 
Grendel. He is feasted and showered with gifts. 
He returns home where he reigns many long, 
peaceful years, after which he fights a fire-breath- 
ing dragon that guards a hoard of treasure. He 
is mortally wounded in the conflict and dies, but 
not until he has seen the treasure that he has won 
for his people. 

The origin of the Beowulf \% shrouded in mystery. 



22 ENGLISH WRITERS 

There is but one manuscript of it in existence, and 
this forms the sole aid to scholars in their efforts 
to solve its authorship, and this dates back to the 
seventh century. That it was sung in mead-halls 
many years before it was put in vrritten form 
cannot be doubted. 

Whether Beowulf was a true or a fictitious per- 
sonage we do not know. As regards this the 
greatest diversity of opinion prevails. Some 
maintain that the story — minus the fanciful ele- 
ment naturally accruing, through the years of 
tradition that preserved it — is true ; that there 
was a real Beowulf and that he fought a real wild 
beast. Others go to the opposite extreme and 
would interpret it all as a gigantic metaphor ; 
that the " Grendel '' was a destructive plague — 
epidemics such as malaria, etc., were common 
to the marshy country of the Anglo-Saxons — 
and that Beowulf was some wise chieftain that 
drained the swamps or in some way stopped the 
plague. 

But it is not for us to speculate how much is 
true and how much is false. We prefer to believe 
that it is founded on some true incident that has 
been expanded and added to through the passing 
centuries until it has reached its present form. It 



ENGLISH WRITERS 23 

is interesting to us because in it we see the man- 
ners and customs, the aspirations, and the religious 
beliefs of our ancient forefathers. It reflects 
their lives perfectly, — nay the very physical ele- 
ments of nature herself. And to this end it has 
proven a rich treasure-house for antiquarians. 

The Beowulf loses much in translation. But 
such is the strength of the heavy thought-laden 
Saxon words, the compounding and parallelism, 
that even in modern English we can detect those 
forces that are in after years to ascend to the 
sublime heights of a Paradise Lost or an In 
Memoriam. 

HI. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400). 

Before we can enter upon the study of Chaucer 
or at all understand the greatness of his genius or 
the significance of his works, we must, very 
briefly, bridge the gap between him and the times 
as depicted in the Beowulf. 

A few words as to the technique of Anglo- 
Saxon poetry may not, perhaps, be out of place 
here. Anglo-Saxon poetry lacked both rhyme 
and meter. Its place was supplied by parallelism 
and alliteration, the latter doubtless accentuated 
by the sharp twangs of the harp of the singing 



24 ENGLISH WRITERS 

scop or gieeman (the former a maker of verse, and 
the latter only a singer). Coupled with the strong 
imagery and compound wording of the poetry 
itself 5 it was very effective. The following re- 
markable translation of a portion of the Beowulf 
will illustrate it : 

"An unwinsome wood, 
Water stood under it. 
Ghastly with gore, 
It was grief to all Danes ; 

A sight of sorrow 

To the Scyldings' friends." 

After the NonPxan Conquest (1066 a. d.), all this 
vras changed, and the original parallelisms and 
alliterative forms were supplanted by the modern 
scheme of rhyme and meter. 

Space does not permit even a partial discussion 
of the inspired C^dmon, the father of English 
poetry, nor the philosophical Cynewulf who has 
given us some of the best Anglo-Saxon poetrj^ 
These men lived and composed about the seventh 
century. We pass also the beautiful life of the 
Venerable Bede (born 673 A. D.) and that of King 
Alfred (Cir. 851-901, a. d.), statesman-scholar, 
who found his kingdom in chaos and left it in 
})eace, who lifted on high the torch of learning 



ENGLISH WRITERS 25 

when his country was dark with ignorance and 
superstition. We hurry on to the Xorman Con- 
quest. So far we have observed two elements 
in our race : Fu^st, the Anglo-Saxons proper, second, 
the Britons with which they came in contact when 
they invaded England (460 (?) a. d.) and who were 
composed of different tribes. We will now note 
the third element, — the Norman. 

The Norman Conquest had a most salutary ef- 
fect upon the English race. Before that they 
were still Anglo-Saxons ; now they are English 
in the strict sense of the term. The Normans, 
as conquerors, became the ruling class. The 
Anglo-Saxons were forced into a lower position. 
They were the " hewers of wood and drawers of 
water," while their Norman masters lorded it over 
them, and attempted to force upon them the Nor- 
man (or modified French) language and customs. 
But here theu^ power ended. They could con- 
quer the Anglo-Saxons, but they could not 
make them Normans. And so for centuries the 
Anglo-Saxons clung to their native language and 
customs with an unparalleled stubbornness and 
tenacity. But in the end the inevitable hap- 
pened. The Normans began to lose their dis- 
dain for the Anoio-Saxons, while the latter 



26 ENGLISH WEITERS 

began to hate their masters less bitterly. The 
two races began to intermarry, customs and man- 
ners began to be exchanged, the two languages 
fused, and the two racial streams that had flowed 
side by side for over two centmues became one. 
The people were no longer Anglo-Saxon or Nor- 
man, — they were English. That is why the Eng- 
lish language is the strong language it is. The 
best elements of both languages survived, and 
hence the wealth of synonyms. That is why the 
English race is a ruling race. The slow massive 
intellect of the Saxon vv^as enlivened and rendered 
supple and acute by the versatile element of the 
Norman-French. 

Chaucer, therefore, is interesting to us because 
he is the first exponent of this great amalgama- 
tion. He writes not in Anglo-Saxon, like C^d- 
mon or Cynewulf, or Latin like the Bede, — cen- 
turies before — nor in French, as the courtiers did, 
but in English. He is the great mouthpiece of a 
unified language and a unified race. His great 
work is the Canterbury Tales. Twenty-nine pil- 
grims, beside himself, assemble at Tabard Inn for 
a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at 
Canterbury. They agree that each shall tell two 
stories on the way thither and two on the re- 



ENGLISH WRITERS 27 

turn. Scarce a fourth of that number are, how- 
ever, told. All the different classes of society 
are represented. There is a Knight, a Priest, a 
Pardoner, a Franklin, a Student, etc. Chaucer 
rides among them and with twinkling eyes notes 
the little traits and mannerisms that show forth 
character. He tells ns these little incidents and 
in that way brings us to see the various personali- 
ties as clearly as if we were intimately acquainted 
with each one. 

Chaucer's spelling is archaic, and at first glance 
many words seem strange and foreign. But as 
we are entertained by his kindly wit and inimi- 
table style we feel that we have at last reached 
firm ground from which we may pursue our 
study of English Literature with mterest. 

While we would fain pass on to the greater per- 
sonages of Literature, there are still some names 
that command our attention. Among these, Johx 
Wycliff (1324 (?)-138J:) may not be omitted. 
A personalty that could inspire hundreds to suffer 
persecution, and a scholarship which enabled him 
to translate the Bible, mark him great. Wj^cliff's 
translation of the Bible marked an epoch in 
English thought, and its influence was even 
greater when almost a century later William 



28 ENGLISH WIIITERS 

Caxton (1422 (?)-1492) set up the first printing 
press at Westminster. 

A work of scarcely less importance was that of 
Piers Plowman^ by William Langlais^d (1322- 
1400) (?) for this was the beginning of a great 
literature on the brotherhood of man and the 
attempts to better the lot of those who live 
neighbors to poverty. The author would have 
us believe that the poem was a vision, but the 
sterling truths it enunciates are certainly far from 
visionary. In quite another vein was the book 
of Travels of Sir John Maistdeville (1300- 
1372) (?). This is a pseudonym, and the book is 
filled with the veriest Arabian Mghts tales, but 
in it may be detected the germs of the novel. 

A century later Sir Thomas Malory (1430- 
1496) (?) wrote his famous Morte d^ Arthur^ a 
collection of the legends of the mythical King 
Arthur, that was, in the hands of Tennyson, to 
be the foundation for his masterly Idylls of the 
King. Somewhat later still. Sir Thomas More 
(1478-1535) created a stir with his Utopia, This 
is a book very much like Plato's Pepublic, that 
outlines an ideal state where every one has plenty 
and no one is rich ; where social evils are banished 
and every one enjoys to the full the fruits of his 



ENGLISH WRITERS 29 

labor. The book has become almost a classic in 
our language. The plain, matter-of-fact person 
sees nothing in it but absurdity, but to the philo- 
sophic social reformer it will always be a mine, rich 
in plans and ideas for social betterment. 

Altogether this was a period in the history of 
England's literature indicative of great results. 
Like the Biblical book of Genesis, it was a period 
of beginnings. We pause here to discuss very 
briefly another great literary form, — the drama. 



CHAPTEE II 

PEEIOD OF ITALIAN INFLUENCE 

IV. The Kise of the Drama. 

DuRi:N'a the time of Chaucer, English society 
presented a strange antithesis. It was in the 
midst of Feudalism. Knights, armed cap-a-pie, 
rode hither and thither in search of adventure. 
Prodigies of valor were performed, magnificent 
feasts were given, and splendid balls were held. 
Even war assumed a tournament-like aspect. Out- 
side of all this sham and glitter was the cold drear 
world of the poverty-stricken peasant. Afflicted 
with hunger, cold, and the terrible Black Plague 
his life was one long drawn-out misery. But 
things began to change. England was at war with 
her ancient enemy, France. Victory followed 
victory, and it was noticed that the brawny files 
of English peasantry availed quite as much as 
the spectacular charges of the knights. And when, 
at Crecy, the Black Prince won his spurs for a 
victory against overwhelming odds, the British 

30 



ENGLISH WRITERS 31 

peasantry won theirs, also. For that victory was 
won not by the gilded lances of the lordly knights, 
but by the cloth-yard arrows and yew-tree bows 
of the sturdy yeomen. 

Before Chaucer's time this state of affairs so- 
cially had been faithfully reflected in the literature. 
The stories in prose and poetry were all about 
pale maidens besieged in castles by monstrous 
green dragons, and rescued by some knight who 
was the incarnation of nobleness and chivalry. 
But Chaucer changed all this. His stories are full 
of the healthy red blood of English common 
sense. 

After Chaucer, no writers worthy of our atten- 
tion appeared for several centuries. But during 
all this time and for hundreds of centuries some- 
thing was being shaped and fashioned that in the 
coming years was destined to play an important 
role in the literature of all nations, and that was 
the drama. Let it be distinctly understood at 
the outset that, first, last and always, the drama 
originated in the ritual of religion, be that relig- 
ion heathen or Christian. 

The inventive genius of the Greeks first pro- 
duced the drama, growing as it did out of the 
ritual in the temple services. And under Sophocles 



32 ENGLISH WRITEfiS 

and Euripides it reached a grandeur never after- 
ward attained. The Romans copied from the 
Greeks, but produced only comedies. Under 
Plautus and Terence the comedy was fairly well 
handled. One writer indeed, Seneca, attempted 
tragedy, but his works are not to be compared 
to the old Greek tragedians. When Christianity 
was introduced an outcry was raised against the 
drama, chiefly because of the many hymns it con- 
tained which extolled the greatness of the heathen 
deities. That, and the chaos following the dis- 
memberment of the Eoman Empire in the West, 
together with the consequent oncoming of the 
Dark Ages, completely silenced the drama. So 
completely had the drama disappeared that when, 
during the Eenaissance, some of the lost plays of 
Plautus and Terence were found, they were not 
recognized as plays, but as stories. 

It remained, then, for the literary world to la- 
boriously reinvent the drama, which it did after 
a great lapse of time. And again the beginning 
was in religion. The humble monk, copying 
Sacred Writ, was no doubt impressed with the 
dramatic character of the events narrated. So the 
simple church service began to be more complete 
and more complicated. Certain Biblical scenes 



ENGLISH WRITERS 33 

were rehearsed at appropriate occasions. They 
were arranged more and more^ enlarged, and uni- 
fied, until suddenly, long before the world realized 
it, the drama was born again. 

One of the first scenes of which we have any 
record was the Quern QucBritis (Whom do ye 
seek) played at Easter morning. It was simple. 
One man stood at a rude improvised sepulcher, 
and after speaking was answered by the choir. 
Step by step, as time went on, other characters 
were introduced, and gradually other scenes, 
e. ^., Christmas, the Passion^ the Temptation, etc. 
Soon other parts of the Bible were used, and be- 
fore long a complete cycle was produced, depicting 
Biblical scenes from the Creation to Doomsday. 
By this time the various trades had established 
" guilds." Eventually each guild had a special 
part of the cycle. The cycles were generally 
played on Corpus Christi Day, on open platforms 
mounted on wheels. Inasmuch as the people 
were almost wholly illiterate, these plays were 
a source of great education. 

So far in these plays — called Miracle Plays — 
nothing original had been produced. But invent- 
ive genius finally began to assert itself in a new 
type called the Morality Plays, where abstract 



34 ENGLISH WRITERS 

characters, as Virtue and Yice discoursed. Finally 
in the lapse of centuries, through a gradual proc- 
ess of evolution, purely secular plays began to 
be produced, which in after years should culminate 
in the masterpieces of a Dr. Faustus, a Hamlet 
or a King Lear. 

V. ]Sro]N"-DEA]\iATic Writers of the Eliza- 
bethan AaE 

From the sunny coasts of Italy a great wave of 
enlightenment was spreading ; it was not limited 
to one country or political division, but it spread 
over Europe, gathering impetus as it advanced un- 
til it culminated in a most wonderful awakening 
in England. This movement is known as the 
Renaissance, and the awakening of England, and as 
the Elizabethan Age. JSTever before in the history 
of mankind had there been results equal to those 
of this period. We defer a further discussion of 
this age to the next section and hasten to the im- 
portant non-dramatic writers. 

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) was undoubt- 
edly one of the greatest of these. Spenser was a 
Londoner by birth, but the story of his life, — his 
trials and persecutions while living among the half 
wild Irish, his poverty, and his long wait for 



ENGLISH WEITERS 35 

royal favor, — these are all things about which we 
are not concerned. For Spenser was a subjective 
poet and the things of the external world mat- 
tered little so far as influencing his works was 
concerned. It is his Faerie Queene that concerns 
us, for it is one of the great works of English 
literature. The Faerie Queene is a great allegory, 
planned to comprise twenty -four books ; each 
book was to tell of the adventure of a knight who 
personified some moral virtue. Spenser, however, 
completed but six books. These knights go out 
from the court of Gloriana, the fairy queen, and 
perform their exploits. The style will at first 
seem odd and the spelling is still archaic, but one 
has no trouble in reading it as is seen from the 
first line : 

" A Gentle Knight was pricking o'er the plaine." 

His other works are The Shepherdess Calendar 
(pastoral), Araoretti([.OYQ^OTig^)^ and Ejrlthalamioii 
(i. ^., upon marriage, written for his own mar- 
riage)c 

Sir Philip Sidxey (1554-1586) is known to 
us far more because of his personality than because 
of his works, — which, indeed, were not published 
till after his death. The Arcadia^ the A^^ologie 



36 ENGLISH WRITERS 

for Poetrie^ and Astroj>hel and Stella are the most 
important. He has gone down in history as the 
ideal gentleman. 

Feancis BACOisr (1561-1626) is known as the 
father of the inductive method of scientific re- 
search. While this is not strictly true, yet it is 
not to be disputed that he brought it into promi- 
nence. His dictum was to test everything and 
anything and to establish laws from these investi- 
gations and not from hearsay. His great work 
was the Novum Organum. It was written in 
Latin — the language of science — but, like the 
Faerie Queene^ was never completed. Enough 
was written, however, to color thought, scientific 
and philosophic, for centuries. 

Bacon was a pioneer in his work, and we can 
comprehend the significance of his plan of work 
only when we remember that up to this time 
Aristotle's works had been the last word in all 
knowledge. Throughout the Middle Ages the 
schoolmen referred to Aristotle as " the Master," 
and his statements were unquestioned. Bacon's 
work was, therefore, but another proof that the 
darkness and tradition of the Middle Ages were 
gone and that the Renaissance was no mere 
chimera. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 37 

VI. Ckeistophee Maelowe (1564-1593). 

While few really great figures dot the literary 
horizon since Chaucer's time, yet changes of a 
most momentous nature have been taking place in 
the political, social, and religious strata of Eng- 
land. These changes have been briefly discussed, 
and we are now on the threshold of an epoch 
famous in history and literature, — the Elizabethan 
Age. 

More and more the democratic spirit of the peo- 
ple had been curbing the haughtiness of the kings. 
Bloody Mary, after an inglorious reign, had gone 
down to her grave in disgrace. England again 
breathed freely. Then Elizabeth ascended the 
throne amid the resounding acclaim of " Long 
live Queen Bess," and England entered upon an 
eventful epoch. Science had been making tremen- 
dous strides. Isew inventions, but a few years be- 
fore unthought of, became common realities.- The 
Spanish Armada had been destroyed and fresh 
laurels were added to the cross of St. George. Won- 
derful explorations were made. It was rumored 
that across the watery expanse of the mighty 
Atlantic a vast continent extended, where the 
people roofed their houses with gold, where all 
hopes could be fulfilled and all desires gratified ; 



38 ENGLISH WEITERS 

Ponce De Leon had set out for the fountain of 
youth, and doubtless would find it. For there 
perfection reigned. The landscape was made 
dazzling by the sheen of a myriad gems that hung 
upon the crystal trees, and there : 

" The Lydian Tiber flows, with gentle current, 
In a land rich in heroes." ^ 

People walked with elastic step ; all seemed 
drunken with the elixir of life. The air was full 
of a delicious, unexplored mystery. Perchance 
the Golden Age, which poets had sung and seers 
foretold, was here ! 

It was with such incentives and such stimuli 
that Christopher Marlowe, greatest of all pre- 
Shakespearean dramatists, wrote that wonderful 
blank verse which made him famous, and has been 
rightfully called '^ Marlowe's mighty line." His 
life was brief. A graduate of Cambridge, he 
early plunged into dissipation and in a drunken 
brawl was stabbed, ere he was thirty. 

But it is not Marlowe's brief and tragic life that 
interests us most. Marlowe was the first poet to 
use blank verse with ease. Other dramatists be- 
fore him had used it but, endeavoring to adhere 

^ Vergil's ^neid. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 39 

to classic regulations, their works were strained 
and artificial. But Marlowe took blank verse and 
with the skill of a master moulded it into the 
mighty line that was to hnmortalize him. 

Marlowe wrote four plays that are important. 
His first was Tanibiirlaine, The main figure is 
Timur the great Mongolian conqueror, and, though 
he writes in a rather bombastic style, Marlowe 
vividly depicts the lust of conquest. His third 
play — Edioard ZZ— shows the weakness of a king, 
and has been called the best historical play ever 
written. His last pla}" — The Jew of Malta — is a 
powerful portraiture of malice and ^xixy. It has 
been thought to have furnished material for 
Shakespeare's Shylock. It is his second play — Di\ 
Faustus — that is his masterpiece. The storj^ is 
brief and familiar to all. Faustus, a German 
doctor, having exhausted all the various branches 
of knowledge, and thirsting for more, sells his 
soul to Lucifer on condition that whatever he 
(Faustus) asks shall be granted for the space of 
twenty-four years, at which time Lucifer shall 
claim his soul. The construction and technique 
may be a product of Marlowe's genius, but the 
play itself is a product of the Elizabethan Age. 
The widening horizon of facts and the burning 



40 ENGLISH WRITERS 

thirst for more knowledge is reflected in one of 
Faustus' soliloquies : 

" Had I as many souls as there be stars, 
I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. 
By him I'll be a great emperor of the world, 
And make a bridge throughout the moving air." 

The lust of knowledge has fastened itself upon 
Faustus so deeply that everything else seems 
dwarfed and insignificant. Eternal life, nay 
heaven itself, seems puny in comparison, and we 
hear him say to Mephistophilis, who is bewailing 
the fact that, being a f oUow^er of Lucifer, he will 
never see heaven again : 

" What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate 
For being deprived of the joys of heaven ? 
Learn thou of Faustus' manly fortitude, 
And scorn these joys thou never shalt possess." 

When, at his command, Mephistophilis brings 
Helen of Troy to him, he breaks out in the two 
most famous lines of the tragedy : 

" Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? " 

That Marlowe might have eclipsed Shakespeare, 
had he lived, is universally admitted ; and his 
tragic death has been much lamented. Critics 



ENGLISH WRITERS 41 

agree that the closing lines of Dr. Faustics might 
appropriately have been his own epitaph : 

'< Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, 
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough, 
That sometime grew within this learned man," 

YII. AViLLiA^i Shakespeaee (1564-1616). 

In the same year that the wielder of the mighty 
line first opened his eyes to the cares and sorrows 
of this world, there was born to modest, unassum- 
ing parents, at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwick- 
shire, a child who was destined to be the greatest 
factor in the shaping of English drama, and that 
child was William Shakespeare. 

Much of Shakespeare's life is shrouded in ob- 
scurity, and the few meager facts can only in- 
directly be ascertained. His education, so far as 
school life is concerned, was pitifully inadequate. 
But Shakespeare learned from another school and 
from a different master. Roaming about the 
flower-spangled meadows and almost idyllic land- 
scape of simny Warwickshire, he early came in 
touch with Nature, that eldest of teachers. Per- 
haps he helped his father, a butcher, to eke out 
the family income. While yet young, he married 
Anne Hatheway, a woman six j^ears his senior. 



42 ENGLISH WRITERS 

He must now strike out for himself. Whether it 
was because he thought that there was a better 
opportunitj^ in London, or because h^ had been 
discovered poaching deer in the preserve of a 
neighboring nobleman, is not certain. But at 
any rate he went to London, which was to the 
English youth what New York is to the American. 
There he pluckily determmed to win a name for 
himself. During this period of obscurity he must 
have been writing plays, for, when we hear of 
him again, he has made a place for himself among 
struggling playwrights. And that was no mean 
achievement. For at that time playwiiting was 
the all-consuming ambition among aspiring au- 
thors as short-storv writina^ is now. But Shake- 
speare steadily rose. He soon either owned or 
had a leading interest in two theatres, — the Globe 
and the Black-friars. These yielded him a good 
income. He was now a man of influence and 
free to write at will. This was his period of 
worldly success. For scholars have divided his 
life into four periods : (1 ) The period of appren- 
ticeship. He had not yet mastered the art of 
writing dramas. His characters are inconsistent, 
his plots not fullv developed, and his dialogues 
painfully long and uninteresting. (2) The period 



ENGLISH WRITERS 43 

of worldly success. His plays show more polish 
and finish. Success is his. He is no longer among 
the struggling throng, but he has made good. 
(3) The period of sorrov\^. Whether it was the 
loss of a loved one, or the philosophical tossing of 
a mighty intellect, is not known. But the plays 
of this period show a breadth of conception and 
profundity not hitherto manifested. It is during 
these titanic wrestlings of the mind that he pro- 
duces his greatest tragedies, — Hamlet^ Macbeth^ 
and King Lear. It is here that we hear Hamlet, 
after soliloquizing upon existence, exclaim con- 
cerning his faithless mother : 

" O God, a beast that wants discourse or reason 
Would have mourned longer." i 

and Macbeth, after the murder of Duncan, toss- 
ing about on his bed, with fevered brow, cries 
out : 

" Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more ! 
Macbeth does murder sleep." ^ 

How different indeed from his early appren- 
ticeship when, in the exuberance of youth, he 
bursts forth : 

1 Hamlet, ^Macbeth, 



44 ENGLISH WEITERS 

*< O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright ! 
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night 
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; 
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear ! " ^ 

Then he had the world before him; now he 
had tasted of its disappointments and experienced 
its shams. But he finallj emerges upon (4) the 
period of peace, when he writes his last four 
plays. 

Shakespeare was not a great poet. He wrote 
much poetry, but were it not for his plays he 
would long since be forgotten. Shakespeare was 
a genius. What is a genius ? Some one has 
said, " Genius is the faculty of improving.'' 
Shakespeare's transition from a bungling play- 
wright to a master of tragedy proves him a 
genius. And it was this genius dramatically ap- 
plied which made him the greatest playwriter 
since the days of the immortal Sophocles. 

Whole libraries have been written on Shake- 
speare and his plays. They divide themselves 
naturally into three classes — though this is by no 
means the order of their composition: (1) His- 
tories, (2) Comedies, and (3) Tragedies. 

His historical plays are, perhaps, not so well 

^ Romio and Juliet. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 45 

known as compared with the others. But they 
doubtless were very popular at the time. For 
Shakespeare lived in a time when Englishmen 
were very proud of their nationality, and patriotic 
enthusiasm ran never so high as in the days of 
Elizabeth. And so while practically all his his- 
tories deal with events prior to this, they deal 
with facts of which every Briton was proud, and 
we can readily imagine the applause that ensued 
when they were acted, and so much the more 
because Shakespeare, with the license of art, 
boldly disregarded actual facts and made events 
happen for the best eif ect. Of these Richard 11^ 
Biehard Illy Henry /F, Henry F, Henry F/, 
Julius Ccesar^ and Antony and Cleopatra may be 
noted, though the last two are tragedies also. 

Only a cursory glance can be given to the 
comedies, important as they are. It is assumed 
that these are well known. Who, for instance, 
has not heard in the Merchant of Venice of Shy- 
lock and his pound of flesh ? and of the noble 
plea of Portia ? And so with the characters of 
As You Like It^ Twelfth Night, A Midsummer 
Night's Dream, A Wintei^'s Tcde, The Tempest, The 
Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Noth- 
ing, and A Comedy of Errors. 



46 EJs^GLISH WRITEES 

And so with the tragedies. The grief-stricken 
Hajnlet, the ghost, the deceitful mother, the con- 
spiring uncle, the mourning Opheha, in Hamlet; 
the wavering Macbeth, the aspiring and remorse- 
ful Lady Macbeth, the ever present ghost of Ban- 
quo, and the innocent Duncan of 2Iacleth ; the 
aged Lear and his daughters in Krng Lear ; the 
passionate Romeo in Borneo and Juliet^ and the 
equally passionate Othello in Othello^— ^ have 
become associated with that class of things which 
we are expected to know as a matter of course. 
Perhaps the greatest encomium that can be passed 
upon these plays is that after three and one-half 
centuries, when the language in which they were 
written and the costumes in which they were 
stao:ed have radicallv chano^ed, thev still hold an 
audience spellbound. 

The above mentioned plays are the ones the 
reader will find most interesting. Of the other 
plays of secondary importance or doubtful authen- 
ticity, we might mention Coriolanus^ Troihis and 
Cressida^ Love'^s Lahor Lost^ Titus A7idro7iicus^ 
Two Gentlemen of Yerona^ King John, Taming 
of the Shrew^ AlVs Well That Ends Well, Jleasiire 
For Measure^ Thnon of Athens^ Pericles^ Cymhe- 
line^ Henry VIII (unfinished). For it must be 



ENGLISH WRITERS 47 

remembered that all of Shakespeare's plays are 
not masterpieces by any means, and many are 
interesting only to the advanced scholar and then 
but for tracing the progress of Shakespeare's 
ability or of furnishing a possible addition to the 
few meager facts about his life that we possess. 

To the uneducated reader, Shakespeare is seldom 
very interesting. That is but a criterion of his 
depth. Shakespeare must be read and reread 
and carefully studied to be appreciated. Exclud- 
ing the Bible, there are few writers that have 
contributed so many phrases and maxims to our 
language. Shakespeare is a great dramatist, be- 
cause his characters are real living acting per- 
sonalities, and because his plays show a deep and 
masterful insight into the intricate psychological 
recesses of the human mind. 

YIII. From Elizabeth to Charles. 

The Renaissance never died out in England to 
the extent it did in other countries, and the 
reasons are at once apparent. Here again, the 
sterling worth of the Anglo-Saxon race stands out 
in bold relief. Some one has Vv^ell said that while 
the Italian humanists studied Greek for the 
pleasure of reading the classics, the English 



48 ENGLISH WEITEKS 

studied it for Christ's sake. And there is a great 
gulf between Boccaccio on the one hand and 
Erasmus on the other. 

Consequently we find that when the tide of the 
New Learning had reached its maximum, there 
was not that quick dissipation of humanitarian 
study and results so apparent on the continent, 
especially Italy. But there was an application to 
solid substantial labor. The vision once given 
must not be lost sight of but must be attained. 
The joyousness of youth had passed like the foam 
on the wine, but the sure steadiness of manhood 
remained. The blithesomeness of the Elizabethan 
Age merged into the stern seriousness of the 
Puritan Age^ and while the latter overreached it- 
self, the trend was unmistakably upward. 

This is best seen in the progress of the drama, 
and to trace that we pass by Eichaed Hooker 
(1554-1600) and his learned discourses on religion, 
and JoHJS" Do:^^NE (1573-1631) in the rugged 
freedom of whose verse lay the germs of future 
romanticism, — and omit also a host of minor 
writers. 

THE PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA 

It will be remembered that in Section YI the 



ENGLISH WRITERS 49 

origin of the drama was discussed. After the 
Miracle and Morality Plays had run their course, 
the art of manufacturing plots was laboriously 
reinvented step by step. Raljph Royster Doyster 
(Udall) is one of the first that can be called a play. 
Another is Gammer Gurton'^s Needle ("William 
Stevenson (?) ), while Goboduc by Tho:\ias Sack- 
viLLE (1536-1608) and Thomas Norton is a third. 
These are crude plays ; the humor is often cheap, 
the scenes bloody and the dialogues inferior. In 
viewing the evolution of the drama at this period, 
one is reminded of the youthful taste for blood- 
shed and quick action that is replaced in later life 
by a taste for fine points in emotion and technique. 

The next distinct advance is The Sj)anis/i 
Tragedy by Thomas Kidd (1557-1596) (?). This 
is a play of a very high order. As one eminent 
critic has said, " It reaches back to Goboduc and 
forward to King Lear. The Sjyanish Tragedy 
may be said to compare favorably with the 
Shakespearean masterpieces. From now on the 
history of the drama is glorious but brief, Marlowe 
and Shakespeare being the high-water mark. 

Beginning with Ben Jo^s^sois" (1573 (?)-1637) a 
decline is apparent. Upon Jonson's varied and 
stormy life we need not dwell. Suffice it to say 



50 ENGLISH VfRITERS 

that he was a man of great force of character and 
profoundly learned. He used all his character 
and learning to force the drama back to classic 
lines and elevate it, and — failed, just as signally 
as modern play writers and stage managers who 
attempt the same thing fail. Although Jonson 
failed, his efforts were successful for a while. 
But the degeneracy of the drama could not — as 
now — be stemmed. 

The masques which Jonson wrote won him 
royal favor and he was made poet laureate. His 
principal plays are Every Man in His Humor^ 
Cynthia's Revels^ Yoljpone^ The Alchemist and 
The Silent Woman. 

Among the host of lesser contemporaries may 
be noted Philip Massiis-gee (1584-1640), who 
produced The Virgin Martyr^ A New Way to Pay 
Old Debts^ The Grand Dulce of Florence.^ and The 
Maid of Honor ^ and Beaumo]N"T (1584-1616) and 
Fletcher (1597-1625). These latter two are 
always associated together. But brilliant as 
isolated plays might be, the glory of the drama 
had departed, and the succeeding years have, as 
yet, failed utterly to produce a Marlowe or a 
Shakespeare. 

Such, m brief, has been the course of the 



ENGLISH WRITERS 51 

drama. A new order of things had arisen when 
the Puritan dominated England, and we pause to 
turn to the study of its greatest literary exponent, 
Milton. 

IX. John Milton (1608-1674). 

After centuries of indifference, the world is at 
last beginning to pay respectful homage to the 
mighty genius of the blind poet. Up to this time, 
Milton was the greatest man of letters England 
had produced, and in many respects he was the 
greatest genius she ever produced. Shakespeare 
stands without a peer in one field — the drama. 
But for breadth of conception, for grandeur of 
expression, for wealth of imagery, and for sub- 
limity of imagination, Milton by far eclipsed the 
bard of the Avon. 

Milton was born of well-to-do parents and from 
childhood was destined to letters as a profession. 
After graduating from Christ College, Cambridge, 
he spent six years in studious retirement at Horton. 
Part of Milton's personality was here revealed. 
Six years, with no inclination to follow but his 
own, would have ruined the majority of young 
men. To Milton it was but the means of making 
his knowledge more exhaustive. It was during 



52 ENGLISH WRITERS 

this time that L Allegro (The Mirthful Man) and 
II Penseroso (The Melancholy Man) were com- 
posed. A short time afterward he produced the 
masque, Comus. 

But it is his next work — Lycidas — that stamps 
him great. Had he never written anything more 
he would have been a great poet. For Lycidas is 
one of the three great elegies of the English 
language. The occasion was the death, by drown- 
ing, of a learned friend of his. The poet causes 
all nature to mourn, even the spu'its of the earth, 
and the result is sublime. For as Milton's 
ability was great, his grief was deep. And indeed 
as we read the grief -laden lines of Lycidas we feel 
ourselves coming in touch with what seems more 
than human. But Milton sees the rainbow 
through the storm and after the first wave of grief 
rolls by, he, far from being prostrated, tells the 
shepherds to weep no more. 

*< For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, 
Sunk tho' he be beneath the watery floor ; 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." ^ 

1 Lycidas, 



ENGLISH WRITERS 53 

Milton Avas still a young man, and to complete 
his education he left England to travel. But a long 
brewing civil war at length burst out, and he 
hurried home to aid his country. Milton aided 
the Puritan cause by his pen, andfor tvrenty years 
literature was deprived of her greatest genius. 
"With full knowledge of the result, Milton wrote 
his famous Defeiisio and so lost his eyesight. 

With the death of Cromwell and the consequent 
downfall of the Pm^itan cause, Milton was forced 
into obscurity. Then, in total darkness, worried 
with domestic troubles, and with the cause for 
which he had almost given his life shattered, 
Milton began to dictate the immortal lines of 
Paradise Lost, 

Paradise Lost was not the result of a passing 
whim. It was a steadfast and determined at- 
tempt to 

"... assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men." ^ 

Milton was fully aware of the greatness of his 
task. Since early youth he had felt that he must 
give the world a great epic. The fitting time had 
come now and the pm^pose that had clung to him 

^ Paradise Lost, 



54 ENGLISH WRITERS 

throughout life begins to find expression. Con- 
scious of the great responsibility, and kno^ying his 
own weakness, he addresses the Almighty in one 
of the most beautiful invocations in all poetry : 

" And chiefly thou, Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples, th' upright heart and pure. 
Instruct me, for thou know'st ; thou from the first 
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread, 
Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, 
And mad'st it pregnant." 

Paradise Lost^ telling the story of Satan's 
revolt m heaven and man's fall on earth, is one of 
the greatest epics in all literature. Since the time 
that Milton wrote it, it has colored all succeeding 
theology. Our ideas of the beauty of heaven and 
the terrors of hell are indirectly derived from 
Milton. His conception was as original as great. 
In describing the absolute beauty and perfection of 
the Paradise of our first parents, he gives us that 
figure, famous in literature — the thornless rose. 
In picturing the utter desolation and dreariness of 
hell, he tells us that there was 

" . . no light, but rather darkness visible." 

Paradise Lost was followed by Paradise Re- 
gained which, although a great work, does not 



ENGLISH WRITERS 55 

compare with the former. It is a paraphrase of 
those chapters of Matthew deahng with the 
temptation of Christ. And while an inferior 
work, as compared with Paradise Lost^ its stately 
poise reminds us constantly of the latter. 

The Hymn on the Morning of Chrisfs Nativity 
was composed v\^hile he was yet in college. It is 
a fine poem and its rhyme and meter are to be 
especially commended. The opening lines are 
famous : 

" It was the winter wild 
While the heaven- born child 

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies ; 
Nature, in awe to Him, 
Had doffed her gaudy trim, 

With her great master so to sympathize." 

His other important work, besides numerous 
short poems, sonnets, masques, Latin poems, etc., 
is Samson Agonistes^ a play, and educational 
treatises. 

Perhaps in this practical age vre are prone to 
forget not only the greatness of his literary 
achievements, but also his service to his country. 
This latter meant a great sacrifice, for it was while 
writing his famous Defensio pro Poj)ulo AngJicano 
that he lost his eyesight, as we have seen above. 



56 ENGLISH WRITERS 

and when the second Charles returned in triumph, 
his very life was in danger, and only his age and 
blindness saved him. Like Columbus, who dis^ 
covered a hemisphere a^nd came home in chains, 
Milton, author of some of the greatest works in 
the English language, went down to the grave in 
loneliness and neglect. 

Did he ever become impatient ? We have a 
beautiful allusion to it in a little poem On His 
Blindness, 

" * Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ? ' 
I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent 
That murmur, soon replies, * God doth not need 
Either man's work or his own gifts. 

•x- * -jf * * * 

They also serve who only stand and wait.' " 

If the reader, for the first time reading Milton, 
finds him uninteresting, let him remember that 
" an appreciation of Milton is the last reward of 
consummated scholarship." For if Lycidas marked 
him great, Paradise Lost proclaimed him greatest. 

X. John Bunyan (1628-1688). 
Xo sketch of English literature, however brief, 



ENGLISH WRITERS 57 

would be complete without mention of this most 
singular personage, John Bun van. 

Born in humble circumstances, he outwardly 
exhibited notiiing that could brand him as unusual. 
As the son of a tinker he bade fair to live the life 
of any poor man's son. But while the outside 
was placid, it was that which was within that 
made the name of Bunyan a household word at 
every English hearthstone. 

Bunyan was what the world calls fanatic and 
queer. There never yet was a man possessed of 
honest, conscientious scruples and who had difli- 
culty in placating them, that the world has not 
thus designated. Bunyan v/as such a one. Water- 
loo may have been a great ba^ttle, but deep within 
his man's heart and soul, battles were fought and 
victories were won that make such martial glory 
seem barren folly. 

He literally wrestled " not with flesh and blood, 
but with principalities and powers" of the unseen 
world. Bunyan was spiritual — intensely so. Spir- 
ituality was scattered and diffused throughout his 
whole life ; it permeated every atom of his being. 
The physical world, the transient things of life, 
were to him a farce and a mockery to be ignored 
and forgotten. His mind was great enough to 



58 ENGLISH WRITERS 

grasp the fact that the shadowy pM^sical rested 
entirely upon the eternal spiritual. His heart 
'^ panted after the vraterbrooks " of Divine under- 
standing, and he di^ank deep di^aughts from the 
fountains of Divine consolation. 

In this he differed from Milton. Milton, with 
means, intellectualitv. learning, and all thinos 
that pertain to a polished man of letters, strove to 
"justify the ways of God to men." and to disen- 
tangle the knotty problems of philosophical the- 
oloa^v. His was a oi^eat mind. He dealt with 
lofty questions. But his appeal is lost — utterly 
lost — upon any but trained and cultured in- 
tellects. 

ZSTow contrast Bunyan. Born in poverty, with 
no social standing, deprived of an education, torn 
with conflicting doubts within, and persecuted by 
enemies without. — he faced the world with only 
his genius, his Bible, and the enforced leisure of 
thirteen years of confinement in jail. It was not for 
him to deal with the fine points of theology nor 
to delve into the abstract, metaphysical questions 
of existence. Xo. All his mia^ht and o-enius 
were concentrated to answer that oTeatest of all 
questions, '• TVhat must I do to be saved ? " He 
souo:ht that which thinkino^ men of every race 



ENGLISH WRITERS 59 

and every clime have sought. Gautama, meditat- 
ing in the spice-scented jungles of India, prayed 
for it; the Mongol Confucius searched out all 
learning for it; the brow of the great Aristotle 
became wrinkled as he strove for it; the poet 
Yirgil sang of its coming in the future ; Diocletian 
gave up his crown for it ; the fiery Savonarola 
held the vast Florentine populace spellbound be- 
cause of it. What is it ? Peace. 

The very titles of Bunyan's works are an index 
to the subject matter. His four books are Grace 
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners^ The Life and 
Death of Mr. Badman^ The Holy War, Pilgrim^ s 
Progress, 

Pilgrim^s Progress is his masterpiece. There 
is perhaps no book, except the English Bible, 
that can boast of a circulation equal to that 
of Pilgrim^ s Progress, The style is simple, terse 
and sincere, about eighty-five per cent, of the 
words being Anglo-Saxon. It is a work of a com- 
mon man for common people, and the world, 
hardened, sin-curst and thoughtless, has neverthe- 
less placed its seal of approval upon the life and 
works of John Bunyan. 



CHAPTER III 

PEEIOD OF FEENCH INFLUENCE 

XI. John Deyden (1631-1700). 

The appearance of Dryden in the literary arena 
of England ushers in a new era in literature, — 
the classic age. Before we consider Dryden, a 
few words about classicism may not be out of 
place. 

Without doubt the political situation of England 
at that time had much to do with the advent of 
the classic school. The Puritans, under Crom- 
well, had been in power. Cold, stern, relentless, 
they discountenanced any outward manifestation 
of pleasure. The theaters were closed, the exhi- 
bition of joy was frowned upon, pain was borne 
with stoical indifference — in short, the expression 
of emotion of any kind was crushed and stifled. 
In their efforts to suppress sin they stunted human 
personality. The result Avas that after Cromwell 
died and the royal line of kings was restored, 
England reaped the legitimate fruits of Puritanic 

60 



ENGLISH WRITERS 61 

rigidiiess. Just as a pendulum, when released, 
swings in the opposite direction, so England lurched 
from the path of austere righteousness to the 
broad highway of loose morality. The theaters 
and all places of amusement were reopened and 
men reveled in the luxury of unrestrained license. 

To this period belongs Samuel Butler (1612- 
1680), whose Hudibras was the preferred reading 
of Charles II. Hudibras is nothing else than a 
great lampoon, and hardly rises to the dignity of a 
satire. But it is a forerunner of the masterful 
works of satire by Dryden and Pope. This also 
is the epoch of Joh]^ Locke (1632-1704), whose 
Essay concerning Human Understanding startled 
the philosophic world and kept it in an uproar 
for centuries. 

In short it was an age of loose morals and 
keen scientific and philosophic inquiry, and the 
result is what we would expect, — a stilted and too 
often immoral literature. This stilted literature 
we call '' classic." Classicism is a form of litera- 
ture in which the emotions are suppressed and 
the form is exalted over the subject matter. The 
poetry is cold, lifeless and artificial. Town and 
city life is discussed in preference to the country, 
and wit, satire and burlesque are the favorite 



62 ENGLISH Y/RITERS 

themes. The heroic couplet was the verse-form 
generally used- 
John Dryden was the first great exponent of 
the classic school. And in common with all clas- 
sicists he substituted form for emotion and rhet- 
oric for genuine feeling. In the strict sense of 
the word, Dryden w^as not a poet but a literary 
workman. As such, however, he deserves full 
credit. 

His character lacked many things. Desperate 
efforts have been made to explain his many incon- 
sistencies, but when all things are said, we must 
still call Dryden a time-server and a moral weak- 
ling. He wrote a flattering poem about Crom- 
well and a short time afterward, when Charles II 
returned, he wrote an equally flattering poem to 
that fickle sovereign. Until he was fifty years 
old, he devoted his time and talents almost exclu- 
sively to writing the immoral plays of the period^ 
simply to receive the pecuniary profits. All this 
he himself shamefacedly admits. Then when 
William and Mary ascended the throne, a^nd he 
lost the laureateship, he began to devote his 
splendid genius to work of a nobler cast. 

Dryden's powers are best seen in his satires. 
He is the greatest satirist in the English language. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 63 

His satire is pitiless and withering and comes 
down on the unfortunate like an avalanche. It is 
literally an instance of " woe to him by whom the 
offense cometh." Becoming offended at his printer 
for some reason, he described him as a man 

" Whose noisome breath still taints the ambient air ; 
With leering looks, full-faced and freckled fair, 
With two left legs and Judas-colored hair." 

His first and one of his best satires was Ab- 
salom and AchitojjheL It was directed against 
the Earl of Shaftesbury (Achitophel) and the 
Duke of Momnouth (Absalom), both Protestants, 
who had been detected in treasonable doings at 
the time of the so-called "Popish Plot," when 
feeling ran high between Catholics and Protes- 
tants relative to the creed of their next king. The 
satire appeared seven days before the trial of 
Shaftesbury. The groundwork of the satire is the 
occasion, in Israel, when Absalom revolted against 
his father, King David, and attempted to secure 
the throne. State dignitaries are treated in the 
guise of Jews of the time of David. Needless to 
say, the poem caused a stir. 

His other principal works are Mac Flechnoe 
(a satire directed against a second rate poet named 



64 ENGLISH WRITERS 

Shadwell, a contemporary of Diyden), The Hind 
and the Panther^ a poem discussing Catholicism 
and Protestantism (Dryden had again tmmed 
Catholic, — he changed his creed no less than three 
times), Annus Mirabilisj and such well-known 
short poems as A Song for St, Cecilict^s JDay^ 
Alexander's Feast / or The Power of Miisic^ and 
such plays as All for Love^ Antony and 
Cleopatra^ etc. 

XII. Alexai^dee Pope (1688-1744:). 

Space forbids more than a passing mention of 
the second great writer of the classic school. 
What has been said about the style and diction of 
Dryden's writings applies, on the whole, to Pope. 
His works are flawless so far as form and technique 
are concerned, but utterly wanting as to the 
qualities that make true poetry. 

Pope was a very precocious child. At a time 
when religious feeling w^as intense, he, being a 
Catholic, was ostracized from the best society and 
received but scanty education. He is another ex- 
ample of a great mind in an unsound body. With 
the exception of the Bible and Shakespeare, no 
other writer has enriched our language with so 
many terse and witty proverbs. We note a few : 



ENGLISH WRITERS 65 

" A little learning is a dangerous thing, 
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring." 

* -x- -K- ^ ^ 

" For fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 

* * ¥: •}«• -X- 

" To err is human, to forgive, divine.'* 

4f -H- * -x- * 

" Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, 
As to be hated needs but to be seen, etc." * 

" Not what you say but how you say it " might be 
taken as the constant motto of Pope in common 
with all classicists. It was not the material but 
the polish, that bore weight. 

His Essay on Criticism has long since been 
regarded as classic; it sprang into immediate 
favor when it was produced and has ever since 
been studied as an example of how well and with 
what interest trite and indifferent things could be 
restated. There is nothing strictly original about 
it, for Pope merely collected all the old proverbs 
on composition, and others to illustrate his points, 
and forced them into the artificial singsong of 
the heroic couplet. And it must be confessed that, 
from the standpoint of workmanship, the pro- 

^ Essay on Criticism. 



66 ENGLISH WRITERS 

duction is a work of art. One has only to 
read to find the source of scores of every-day 
sayings. 

In the Rape of the Lock Pope reached the 
climax of the mock epic. The circumstances at- 
tendant upon its production are amusing. A 
young gallant having become enamored of a court 
beauty, succeeded in cutting off a lock of the 
beauty's hair and making good his escape. The 
episode threatened to become serious and Pope 
was appealed to to ^^Tite something to repair 
the breach. The result was the Ra])e of the 
Lock, Every little incident of the day is spoken 
of as if it were a momentous aflfair and the result 
was all that could be desired, both to the estranged 
parties and to all those who. then or since, have 
loved a huge joke. 

Pope is also famous for his translation of the 
Uiadu a.iid the Odyssey, These are very free 
translations, being practically paraphrases. A 
noted critic of the time summed everything up 
when he said, " A good work, Pope, but don't 
call it Homer." 

His other works are, Dunciacl (satire). Essay 
on Man (philosophical), and the E])istle to Dr. 
Arbuthnot (satire). 



ENGLISH WRITERS 67 

XIII. The Eise of the ISTovel. 

English thought did not manifest itself alone in 
the emotionless literatm.^e known as classicism, it 
sought another outlet — prose, and it is this that 
we wish to discuss. 

There were many reasons why English prose 
should suddenly become important. 

There was a growing percentage of people who 
could read and write ; there was a greater free- 
dom for the press ; there was an increased wealth 
per capita, occasioned by England's growing com- 
merce, and again, the political situation was such 
that pamphleteers were in great demand, so that 
the struggling author need not lack financial help 
if his party sympathies were right. Then, too, we 
must not omit the influence of the coffee-houses. 
And what were the coffee-houses ? They were re- 
spectable loafing places. A coffee-house was not 
as exclusive or as expensive as a modern club. 
Here the Londoner could write his letters, meet 
his friends and in short discuss and hear discussed 
all the news of the day. 

It was with influences like these at work that 
Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) founded his famous 
thrice-a-week paper. The Tatler, The Tatler was 
but a single folio sheet, and contained, beside the 



68 ENGLISH WRITERS 

usual bits of news social and political, an essay on 
the follies of the times. The success of The TatJer 
was hnmediate. Queen Anne read it at her break- 
fast table and it was more popular at the coffee- 
houses than all the other papers combined. 

After about a year it was discontinued only to 
give way to a still more popular paper. The Sjyec- 
tator. This was published every day except Sun- 
day and it is this paper that brings the name of 
Joseph Addison (^1672-1719) into prominence. 
Addison has been called the most charming of Eng- 
lish prose-writers. He did the same thing for 
eighteenth century England that Chaucer did for 
the fom^eenth and Shakespeare the sixteenth. — he 
mirrored the people and the times. It was in The 
Sjyectatof that the famous Sir Soger De CoveAey 
Pajyers appeared. Addison's style was and is 
famous for its polish and refinement. 

But the reader is inclined to ask what have the 
writings of Steele and Addison to do with the 
novel ? 

From time immemorial the world has been 
read}^ to listen to a story. In very ancient times 
these stories were wi^itten in the form of great 
epic poems, as the Iliad or Odtssey. where some 
demi-DTjd or hero was the main character. In 



ENGLISH WRITERS 69 

mediaeval times these stories took the form of fairy 
tales, or stories with the improbable element so 
large that we with difficulty see the flesh and 
blood of reality. Chaucer set himself squarely 
against all this. Still, for hundreds of years after 
Chaucer's time, the fiction read by the average Eng- 
lishman was mainly composed of stories in which 
green dragons and fire-breathing monsters fought 
with model knights that were armed with magic 
shields or invincible swords. But in the subject 
matter and diction of The Tatler and S]peGtato'i\ 
all this is changed. We have English common life 
discussed in good sound prose. Yet the writings of 
Steele and Addison were not novels in any sense 
of the word. While they discussed human nature, 
they did not do so tlirough the medium of a stor\^ 
The next link in the chain is none other than 
Daniel DeFoe (1659-1731), author of the famous 
Robinson Crusoe, In Robinson Crusoe we have 
a character that is preeminently human. He is 
beset with obstacles which he overcomes in a 
logical way and without the aid of magic belts or 
fairy attendants. Bolj'uison Crusoe is a tremen- 
dous step in the development of the novel. But 
Eobinson Crusoe is the story of an adventure, and 
is not yet a novel in the correct sense of the word. 



70 ENGLISH WRITERS 

One more step was needed, and that step was 
taken by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) when he 
gave to the world his Pamela and Clarissa Har- 
loioe and by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) when he 
produced Josejyfi Aiidreics and Tom Jones, The 
English novel is novr complete ; it is a story minus 
the magic element and that story is here used, not 
as in Bohiiisoii Crusoe to tell the adventures of a 
character in some far-off clime, but to tell the 
story of human nature in the home and in the city. 
In short to recount the loves, hates and ambitions 
of human natm'e. 

Henceforth nothing further could be done, save 
a fuller development of details. The English 
novel has been invented and it promises to stay as 
long as men a.nd women shall love and hate each 
other and as long as the human heart has longings 
and aspirations. 

XIY. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). 

Among the great figures that dot the literary 
horizon none enlists our sympathy more than that 
of Jonathan Swift, greatest of English prose sati- 
rists. For Swift's life was a tragedy, and none re- 
aUzed it more than he. He was born in Dublin, 
Ireland, and was financially dependent upon his 



1 



ENGLISH WRITERS Yl 

immediate relatives. Being made secretary to a 
kinsman of his brother — an event vrhich he should 
have hailed as good fortune — Swift felt his de- 
pendence more than ever. In fact so strange and 
so queer is his temperament that it can, with 
difficulty, be explained. Swift had an eternal 
grudge against life because he imagined that it 
had a continual spite toward him. He was selfish, 
ambitious and whimsical. Other men had power, 
why not he ? Other men had wealth and influ- 
ence, why not he ? Forsooth the world and the 
powers that be had conspired to deprive him of 
his natural birthright. Therefore the world was 
his foe and mankind his enemy. So reasoned 
Swift. And his worlds may be considered a gi- 
gantic sneer at the world and its farces. 

At the age of twenty-seven, Swift took orders 
and entered the Church. Perhaps there never 
was a greater inconsistency. Not that he failed 
to perform his duties faithfully or that he was in 
any way disloyal to the trust imposed upon him. 
Far from it. He discharged his obligations with 
scrupulous fidelity. He fought for the Church 
and defended her rights ; he gave liberalh" to the 
poor out of his slender income. But in spite of all 
this Swift^s nature was earthly and not heavenly ; 



Y2 ENGLISH WRITERS 

he looked downward and not upward. His lust 
for wealth and power and influence was just as 
great as ever. He never rose above the material. 
And yet he had voluntarily bound himself to min- 
ister to the spiritual wants of people ; to lift men's 
eyes above the earthly and transient, and to fix 
them upon those things that shall endure, when 
" the very elements shall melt with a fervid heat ! " 

Until he was thirty years old he had done noth- 
ing in the literary world. Then, he suddenly dis- 
covered his power. His first work was The Tale 
of a Tub^ in which he sneers at the shams in relig- 
ion. This was followed by The Battle of Boohs^ 
in which he rails at shams of pedantry. But 
Swift's masterpiece is his Gulliver^s Travels, 
This was written soon after the political success 
he had attained, and he lets his fierce, morbid 
anger at humanity have full sway. 

The book itself is a delightful children's book. 
From the point of popularity it ranks with Pil- 
grimes Progress and Rohinson Crusoe, Tet be- 
hind the apparent absurdity of things is seen the 
revengeful, malignant hatred against humanity 

Throughout all of Swift's life — his few successes 
and his reverses, real or fancied, there is but one 
bright glimmer, and that is his Journal to Stella^ 



ENGLISH WRITERS 73 

which is nothing more than a collection of letters 
written to a former pupil of his — Hester J ohnson 
— whom he called his Star (Stella). These letters 
show an aspect of his life not hitherto made mani- 
fest. They were apparently written in his brighter 
and gayer moments. They are filled with a ten- 
derness and pity not elsewhere found in his works, 
nor indeed in his whole life. 

But one bright spot is all. The closing years of 
Swift's life go down to a loneliness and despair 
that is terrible to imagine. Both Stella and the 
one other girl — Ester Yanhomrigh— that had 
loved him, and whose love he had slighted, were 
dead. Nothing remained. And Avith the shadows 
of insanity gathering about him he died. 

Swift made one great mistake in life. He saw 
the deceits and hollo wness of human existence. 
But others have seen them as well and made life 
a success. The difference is that to others they 
were an incentive to be up and doing ; to Swift 
they were but sources of greater hatred and 
greater animosity. The tragic life of Jonathan 
Swift is a lesson to us that the true facts of hu- 
man existence should not repel us from doing our 
best to better it, but rather impel us to more 
earnest endeavors. 



CHAPTEE IV 

MODEEN PEEIOD 

The Bomantic Movement 
XY. De. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). 

Just how much we owe to James Boswell 
(1740-1795) for the persistency with which he 
hung about Johnson will never be computed. 
Suffice it to say that no small amount of the great 
Doctor's fame rests on the activity of this tireless 
Scotchman in keeping himself in his company as 
much as possible and recording in his Life of 
Johnson so many of the brilliant sayings almost 
as they fell from Johnson's lips. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson, the first English lexicog- 
rapher, and in many respects one of the most 
interesting men of letters England has yet pro- 
duced, was the son of a poor Litchfield book- 
seller. He was sent to Oxford and to other 
schools, but his education was incomplete on 
account of a constant lack of funds. Whether it 
was in the schools to which he was sent, or 

74 



ENGLISH WRITERS 75 

whether it was in poring over his father's books 
at Litchfield, it mattered not. Suifice it to say 
that Johnson became one of the most erudite men 
of his age. 

At the age of twenty-seven, Samuel Johnson 
left his paternal roof and went to London, with a 
few literary productions of his own in his pocket, 
determined to win a name for himself. " Then," 
as one of his biographers says of him, "for a 
quarter of a century Johnson fought a hand-to- 
hand conflict with poverty." He obtained work 
as hack writer on several papers, but for all that 
he was poorest of the poor; he was frequently 
forced to sleep on ash heaps or any sheltered 
place, having often not even the price of a night's 
lodging. Then, too, he was afflicted with a con- 
tagious skin disease. He also married a widow 
who proved to be little better off financially than 
himself. In desperation he opened a private 
school, but received only a few students. But 
throughout all, Johnson stuck to London, deter- 
mined to win out. He had just enough of tlie 
old Saxon determination to fight it out to the 
bitter end. And he did win out. His two 
satirical poems, London and The Vanity of Hit- 
7nan Wishes brought him into recognition. The 



76 ENGLISH WRITEES 

leading booksellers then hired him to compile the 
Dictionary of the English Language^ for j^l^STS, 
which he finished in 1755. But it was not till 
seven years later, when George III gave him a 
life pension of ^SOO, that Johnson was really in- 
dependento For just a short time before he was 
compelled to write Basselas^ another of his great 
workSj to defray the expenses of his mother's 
funeral. Later he produced another famous 
work, Lives of the Poets — but from now on he 
was great more on account of his great per- 
sonality, his wonderful flow of conversation, and 
his acknowledged powers as literary lawgiver, 
than because of any further work that he 
produced. 

Johnson was the last exponent of the old classic 
school. He was a classicist to the very core. 
The peaceful quiet of the country, the wonders of 
nature, the expression of emotion, — all these had 
no charm for him. Nay, more, he had a positive 
repugnance for them, and so he threw all his 
power against the rising wave of Eomanticism, 
and for a time stemmed it. But forces were just 
now at work in the social and moral fabric of 
England against which Johnson might vainly hurl 
himself. There was an awakening and an expand- 



ENGLISH WRITERS 77 

ing which cliifered from the Elizabethan age, only 
because it was greater. The era of lax morals 
was being supplanted by a wave of respectability. 
Yice durst no longer stalk openly through the 
streets. The cold, formal, lifeless church services, 
with their abstract, emotionless dissertations on 
the fine points of theology, were being super- 
seded by the earnest democratic preaching of such 
men as Wesley. From a religious standpoint this 
age is famous for the rise of Methodism. The law 
that sent a man to the block for stealing a few 
shillings was struck out. Such men as John 
Howard had been devoting themselves to the 
reform of prisons, and as a result the jails, which 
had been reeking with filth, became more humane 
places of detention. England too was spreading 
out politically. Wolfe's victory over Montcalm 
gave her the supremacy of the New World, and 
Clive, by his conquests, had made England mis- 
tress of India, the land sacred to Brahma and 
Buddha. 

Men had grown weary of cold, unfeeling litera- 
ture that dealt only with wit and satire, and had 
begun to write in a vein that gave freer rein to 
the emotions. They turned from the brick and 
cobblestone of the city with its artificial life, and 



Y8 ENGLISH WRITEES 

called on nature, " eldest of things/' to teach them 
lessons for the heart, and not for the intellect. In 
short, England was again in the travail of a new 
birth that should give life and impetus to the 
great authors of the modern age which should 
win for England her unquestioned supremacy in 
the world of letters. 

XYI. Thomas Geey (1716-1771). 

To the great mass of readers, Thomas Grey is 
kept in memorj^ because of his famous Elegy in a 
Country Churchyard. To students of English 
literature he is kept in mind for the added reason 
that he was one of the earlier Eomanticists, and be- 
cause his Elegy was the first great romantic poem. 

Let us in a few words examine Romanticism. 
"We might briefly define romantic poetry by say- 
ing that it is the opposite of classic poetry. It 
exalted thought above form. It was continually 
seeking after new ideas and new verse-forms. 
The romantic movement is often known as the 
" return to nature '' movement, because, instead 
of selecting city life and city scenes as the 
classicists did, the roma^ntic poets turned to the 
country and began to portray the endless beauties 
of the natural world about us. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 79 

Thomas Grey was not the first poet of the 
romantic movement. Like all other epochs, the 
roots of one lie deep in the other. And so the 
beginnings of Romanticism were deeply hidden 
in the artificial sub-soil of classicism. James 
Thomson (1700-1748) had published a poem, The 
Seasons^ of a decidedly romantic nature. He was 
soon followed by William Collixs (1721-1759) 
whose Odes show that Romanticism is very near 
at hand. His Odes show a delicate fineness of 
thought and expression that is unlooked for at 
this time. Of these his Ode to Evening has be- 
come classic and is by many considered the finest 
in the language. But it was left for James 
Macpherson (1736-1796) to introduce the ro- 
mantic in a novel manner. He pretended to 
have found a number of manuscripts of the poet 
Ossian written in the Gaelic language, and that 
the productions he published were but translations. 
Although it is now almost an assured fact that 
the " translations " were his own works and that 
there never were any " manuscripts," his success 
was complete, and his epics Fingal and Temora^ 
and the other Poems of Ossian were hailed with ac- 
claim. It is at least certain that they have about 
them vigor truly characteristic of the Highlands. 



80 ENGLISH WRITERS 

Other pioneers there were, as Thomas Chat- 
TEETOK (1752-1880) and Geoege Ceabbe 
(1757-1827), but when, in 1751, Grey gave to the 
world his wonderful Elegy^ he not only estab- 
lished his own reputation, but he forever proved 
that Romanticism was a school of writing destined 
to endure. His Elegy has perhaps been translated 
into more languages than any other poem. It has 
been admired the world over. The reason is that 
Grey has written in a way and about a subject 
that appeals to us all. He takes us out in the 
calm, peaceful country, where 

*< The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea." 

And lets us hear 

" The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn." 

And tells us a truth that throughout all these 
years has been smiting the hearts of the self- 
satisfied and complacent, like the handwriting on 
the wall. 

" The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
Await like th' inevitable hour, — 
The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 



ENGLISH WRITERS 81 

In addition to his Elegy ^ Grey wrote very little. 
Several odes, and The Progress of Poesy ^ which 
yet shows the classic influence, may be said to 
comprise his literary efforts. The Elegy in a 
Country Churchyard has won a place for itself in 
the hearts of the people which few other poems 
have, and by many critics has been accorded the 
same high plane that the three greatest elegies 
in the English language occupy — Milton's Lycldas^ 
Shelley's Adonais^ and Tennyson's In Mernoriam, 

XYII. Oliyee Goldsmith (1728-1774). 

Oliver Goldsmith, like Grey and Cowper, was a 
pioneer in the new order of things — the romantic 
era. And the works of each of these three still 
show the influences of classicism. Yet this in- 
fluence was but natural. It was hard for strug- 
ghng authors to gain a hearing, let alone a subsist- 
ence, when they wrote in a style and along lines 
which such literary giants as Dr. Johnson con- 
demned and determined to crush. The result was 
that there was an attempt to " serve God and 
mammon." 

Goldsmith, when a young man, went to college 
as " sizar," i. e.^ one who is part menial and part 
student, being compelled thus to earn his educa- 



82 ENGLISH WRITERS 

tion. After his graduation he returned home, 
having developed a fondness for flute-playing and 
good clothes. He later took a trip on the 
continent, apparently undisturbed by the one 
thought which was worrying his friends, namely, 
what he should do as a life's work. For a time he 
studied medicine, but later became hack-writer for 
a living, and between intervals of his work he 
produced the works that made him famous. Of 
these, two are worthy of mention, The Vicar of 
Walaejield^ a prose narrative, and The Deserted 
Village^ a most interesting poetic work. 

As a man he lacked strength of character, but 
he was withal of a generous na.tm'e. He died ow- 
ing thousands of pounds, much of which had been 
given to the poor. As a writer he has a charm 
peculiarly his own, and we must search far and 
wide to find finer descriptions of natm'e and 
portraitures of character than are found in either 
The Vicar of WaJcefield^ or The Deserted Village. 

XVIII. William Cowper (1731-1800). 

While not ranking as one of the greatest poets 
in English literature, yet, being of the pioneers of 
the romantic movement, and a writer of some of 
our well-known hymns, he deserves mention. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 83 

William Cowper was born in Great Berkhamp- 
stead, a town in Hertfordshire, of an old and 
honored family. His father, a minister, was too 
preoccupied with other affairs to pay much atten- 
tion to his son. His mother was his companion 
and chum, and when she died, while he was but 
six years old, his troubles began and were only 
ended by death. Possessed of a shrinking, retir- 
ing and ultra-sensitive nature, his contact with 
humanity was a source of constant misery. Gaz- 
ing at his mother's picture, in after years, he could 
write with all the sorrow of a sorrow-filled heart : 

" Oh, that those lips had language ! 
Life has passed 
But roughly since I heard them last." ^ 

At eighteen he left school and began to study 
law for which he had little aptitude. He wrote 
occasionally for magazines, and lived an apparently 
aimless existence. But his sensitive nature had 
begun to undergo a change and he began to give 
way to periods of depression. At the age of 
thirty-two he was — by the influence of his uncle 
— given the opportunity of obtaining a good 
government position, which position was to be ob- 

^ On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. 



84 ENGLISH WEITERS 

tained only by passing an examination. Al- 
though this examination was often a farce, yet 
Cowper worried about it night and day, and at 
length his high-strung nature gave way, and his 
mind became unbalanced. 

After being an inmate of an asylum for two 
years, he was released, and the rest of his life was 
spent in the family of Eev. and Mrs. Unwin. 
With the opportunity of his life gone, he was, as 
he tells us in The Castcnoay^ 

" Washed headlong from on board, 
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
His floating home forever left." 

Here in the quiet home of the Unwins, secluded 
from the din and confusion of the great, outside 
world, Cowper lived in peace, and employed him- 
self with carpentering, gardening, and in minister- 
ing to the sick. He seemed to have become con- 
tented with his lot, for he tells us in England that 

" To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime 
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire 
Upon thy foes, was never meant my task." 

But while Cowper was content as far as earthly 
ambition was concerned, his mind was racked with 



ENGLISH WRITERS 85 

thoughts of the world to come. There is much in 
this phase of Cowper's life to remind us of 
Bunyan. For after his fit of insanity Cowper's 
mind was never strong. Indeed it was upon the 
eve of his second period of insanity that he wrote 
that well-known hymn beginning : 

" God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform ; 
He plants his footsteps in the sea, 
And rides upon the storm." ^ 

And as the years wore on, he became filled with the 
idea that he was doomed to eternal punishment. 
And so in mental agony that is terrible to con- 
ceive, he struggled on. There is this difference 
between Bunyan and Cowper. Bunyan in his 
spiritual wrestling was fighting a winning battle, 
whilst Cowper was waging a losing warfare, and 
with a loneliness that is awful to imagine, he went 
down to a despairing grave. The closing line of 
The Castaway^ written in his last years, might 
have been autobiographical for the vivid and realis- 
tic picture it gives : 

" No voice divine the storm allayed, 
No light propitious shone ; 
When snatched from all effectual aid, 
1 Olney Hymns. 



86 ENGLISH WRITERS 

We perish, each alone ; 

But I beneath a rougher sea, 

And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he." 

With the exception of The Task^ Co^^^er wrote 
onl}" short poems. In adaition to the ones abeady 
noted, we might mention Yardly Oak^ O/i the 
Beceijyt of 2fy MotJier^s Picture^ The Kightin- 
gale and the Glovjworm^ The Winter Evening, 
He also made some translations. Only once in his 
works does he forget himself and write in a light 
vein, and that was when he penned The Divert- 
ing History of John Giljriji^ which has never 
failed to amuse. 

As was said before, he was the author of many 
Mmms. Indeed he first began to write hymns at 
the suggestion of a friend, to divert his thoughts 
from melancholj'. But who shall presume to 
estimate the cry that went up from the heart that 
knew itself to be slipping into an abyss, when he 
wrote the immortal lines : 

" Oh, for a closer walk with God, 
A calm and heavenly frame ; 
A light to shine upon the road 
That leads me to the Lamb ! " ^ 

1 Olney Hymns, 



ENGLISH WRITERS 87 

XIX. RoBEET BuEXS (1759-1796). 

About the middle of the eighteenth century 
there was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, of poor 
parents, a child that was in after years destined 
to play upon the heart-strings of the English speak- 
ing people as few other poets have been able to do. 
His life was a tragedy and that simple fact, more 
than anything else, accounts for the passionate 
beauty of his^poetry. We are here reminded of a 
wonderful painter who, being complimented upon 
the rare beauty of his productions, replied, " Yes, 
but I have ground up my wife and children to 
make the colors ! " And so while the impas- 
sioned verses of Burns thrill us as seldom poetry 
does, we must remember that it was produced by 
a life blighted with disappointment, sorrow, and 
sin. 

Burns' opportunity for education was decidedly 
small. He often ate with a book of ballads before 
him, and these he whistled and sang as he did the 
heavy, unmitigating toil of the farm. After his 
father died, his brother and sister and himself 
rented the farm. But the venture was unprofit- 
able. Affairs were such, financially, that he 
decided to go to Jamaica, and it was to defray the 
expenses of the trip that he published his first 



88 ENGLISH WRITERS 

volume of poems. This, however, excited so 
much attention, that he suddenly found himself 
famous, and he decided to remain at home. He 
leased a farm in Dumfriesshire and married Jean 
Armour, and for a few short years lived a really 
happy life. Soon afterward he was made excise- 
man (assessor of taxes) of his district, and this 
position increased the temptation to drink. From 
then on till the end of his short career, his life was 
a succession of drinking bouts with intervals of 
remorse and attempted reformation. Throughout 
it all he continued to write, but his life was cut 
short by his intemperance and he died in his 
thirty-seventh year. Like the tragic career of 
Marlowe, another life, pregnant with the greatest 
possibilities, was cut short ; and sorrow and despair 
reigned where hope and joy might have had full 
sway. 

Burns was a common man. He had the hopes, 
the ideas, the emotions of a common man. Hence 
his poetry appeals to the common people as well as 
to the educated. Its very rusticity is attractive. 
For Burns was in nowise influenced by the classic 
ideas. Of the polished lore of book knowledge he 
knew nothing. And so when he wrote it was 
with a sigh of relief that we find him blissfully 



ENGLISH WRITERS 89 

ignorant of the raven, the lark, and other hack- 
neyed classic terms, but very much alive to the 
timorous partridges and the " milk-white thorn " 
of his Ayrshire farm. He noticed even the 
modest mountain daisy, and when his plowshare 
turned it over he regarded its destruction rue- 
fully: 

" Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 
Thou's met me in an evil hour ; 
For I must crush among the stoure (dust) 
Thy slender stem. 

To spare thee now is past my power 
Thou bonnie gem.'* ^ 

And when on a bleak JSTovember day he plows 
up a mouse's nest, he is reminded of his own hard 
struggle to wring a sustenance from the none too 
fertile fields, and when he remembers that the 
mouse likewise 

"... saw the fields laid bare and waste, 
And weary winter comin' fast." 

And had striven to provide for that time, only to 
have all her care and preparations rudely demol- 
ished, and he begins to apologize, and to wonder 

^ To a Moxiutain Daisy, 



90 ENGLISH WEITERS 

if, after all, such things happen only to mice. As 
he reviews his own brief life, crowned with OTeat 
disappointments, he is forced to say : 

*' But, mousie, thou art no thy lane (alone) 
In proving foresight may be vain ; 
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 
Gang aft a-gley (awry) 
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, 
For promised joy." i 

The Cotters Saturday Night is one of Burns' 
longest poems. It is a most complete portraitm'e 
of the simple, unassuming life of the Scottish 
peasant. It is Saturday night, the week's work is 
done, and the members of the family come in 
from their various places of labor. All sit about 
the fire. There comes a knock at the door, and 
they open it to receive a neighbor boy who is 
come, presumably, on some errand. But the 
mother with the quick intuition of a woman 
perceives the heightened color in Jenney's face 
and the bashfulness of the young man, and guesses 
the reason. They invite him to stay for supper 
and to share in the after worship. And Burns, 
whose hearty capable of such great love, had 

To a Mouse. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 91 

been filled with so much sorrow, cannot refrain 
from stopping in the tale and looking upon the 
peaceful scene his genius has painted, to exclaim : 

" Oh, happy love ! where love like this is found ! 
Oh, heart-felt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! 
From scenes like this old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
That makes her loved at home, reverenced abroad." 

Burns' poetry is not w^hat the world calls 
optimistic. Nor indeed may some of the greatest 
literary masterpieces be so called. But his poetry 
is true — true to nature, true to life. Whatever 
might have been the faults of Robert Burns, 
falsehood was not one of them. He looked truth 
fairly in the face and he wrote the facts about his 
life and the life of others as they were and not 
as they should have been. His life was filled 
with woe and crow^ned with despair, and he knew 
it. And with the unflinching courage of a hero 
he tells us about it. And so we feel that we are 
looking into the sacred chambers of his heart when 
he tells us how : 

" Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon 
To see the woodbine twine, 
And ilka (every) bird sang o' its luve (love) 
And sae did I o* mine. 



92 ENGLISH WRITEES 

" Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, 
Frae aff its thorny tree ; 

And my fause luver (lover) stow (stole) my rose 
But left the thorn wi' me." i 

Burns wrote mostly iii his native dialect which 
has a rugged beauty all its own. He produced no 
great works, but his short poems, ballads, songs, 
etc., are wonderful for their beauty, freshness, 
and sincerity. Many of his poems need only to 
be mentioned to be at once recognized, such as 
Auld Lang Syiie^ John Anderson my jo^ John^ 
Flow Gently Siceet Afton^ Highlamd Mary^ To 
Mary in Heaven^ The Banks 6^' Doon^ Wert 
Thou in the Cauld Blast; his poems To a Mouse, 
To a Zouse, contain a wealth of common sense 
philosophy. He made Scotland laugh by such 
poems as Ta?7i 0^ Shanter'^s Bide, and made her 
realize her importance and sturdy dignity by such 
poems as Scots loha hae wV Wallace hied, and A 
Man's a Man for A' That. 

His philosophy of life is concisely stated in one 
of the noblest of his shorter poems, 2£an Was 
Made to Mourn. And whether we choose to ac- 
cept that as true or false, and whether we choose 
to regard things as they are or as they should be, let 

1 The Banks C Doon. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 93 

us remember that the philosophy, that man was 
created to mourn, was the final verdict of a man, 
neither saint nor friend, to whom much had been 
promised and little given ; who had been permitted 
to sip the cup of fame, honor, and joy, and had been 
compelled to drain the beaker of sorrow; who 
had fought a life and death struggle with poverty, 
temptation and sm, and lost ! 

XX. William Wordsworth (1771-1850). 

We have before us for our consideration the 
life and character of a man who holds an hon- 
ored place in the English world of letters, and 
who is entirely different from any character we 
have so far studied. He has genius, but it was not 
the genius of Shakespeare ; his lines have force, 
but it is not the " mighty line " force or masculine 
vigor of Marlowe ; he has great thoughts, but 
they have not the awe-inspiring sublimity of Mil- 
ton ; he is not rocked with spiritual conflicts like 
Bunyan or untamed and restless like Byron. In 
short, his life is serene and quiet, and he wins his 
fame along avenues not heretofore discovered. 
For Wordsworth was a nature poet. He is the 
greatest nature poet in the English language. 
He loved, exalted, and idolized nature in a way 



94 ENGLISH WRITERS 

that is strictly sui generis. And it is in Words- 
worth's love of nature that the key to the appre- 
ciation of his poetry lies. 

Nature, to Wordsworth, was a sentient per- 
sonality. It was something that lived, in a vague, 
vast and mysterious manner, and through which 
pulsated the throbbing wavelets of feeling. He 
was more than merely in love with nature, he was 
enamored. He could sit for hours, aye, all day, 
with no one to disturb him, mute and spellbound 
by that wonderful incomprehensible something 
that occupied the material world about him. 
In Lines Composed near Tintern Abbey he tells us 
that: 

" The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Their colors and their forms, were then to me 
An appetite. 

^ ¥r ^ ^ "k ¥: 

Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods, 
And mountains ; and all that we behold 
From this green earth.'* 

In fact Wordsworth's adoration of nature bor- 
dered closely upon absolute idolatry. Never was 
heathen devotee filled with greater ecstasy than 



ENGLISH WRITERS 95 

Wordsworth when m communion with the awful 
and mysterious that, which he worshipped. In 
Peter Bell he speaks, in the tones of one who is 
witnessing an act of sacrilege, about those who 
are not moved by nature. Peter Bell, one of the 
characters, comes to the river bank and sees 
there a primrose, but : 

'< A primrose by the water's brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more ! " 

And yet Wordsworth, thorough nature student 
that he was, is woefully incomplete, and that 
in the very places where it would be least ex- 
pected. But the fact is that the very greatness of 
his love caused him to overlook certain truths, 
harsh and cold, but truths, nevertheless. In na- 
ture he recognized only the beautiful, the peaceful 
and the good. He pauses, enraptured, to look 
upon the matchless beauty of a rainbow until 
time is forgotten, but he fails to remember the 
terrible storm that preceded it. He meditates 
all day upon the spotless petals of a rose, but is 
oblivious to the thorn lurking beneath. He is 
overawed at the sight of the oak trees and the 
dense forests, but forgetful of the countless storms 



96 ENGLISH WRITERS 

and the ceaseless life and death struggle through 
which they have passed and are passing before 
they became giants in then* domain. He views 
with contemplative ecstasy the grandeur of the 
mountain ranges^ but ignores the terrible subter- 
ranean convulsions that placed them there. His 
is an ideal world, ours is a real world. Therefore 
we shall not be astonished to discover that he is 
entirely incapable of portraying the human emo- 
tions. Nor, indeed, does he attempt it. The 
higher emotions of love and joy and hate which 
pulsate through the ethereal lyrics of Shelley are 
unknown to him. Livmg in the picturesque lake 
district in Westmoreland, with his wife and sister 
Dorothy, a life unclouded with the least shadow 
of misfortune, devoting his life to poetry and the 
contemplation of the beautiful, being far removed 
from those v^hom stern necessity compels to wage 
a mortal combat for their very existence, it were 
strange indeed if he were able to depict the grim 
scenes of actual life. 

Wordsworth was a very voluminous writer. One 
of his great faults is that he wrote too much and 
his revisers struck out too little. But in the great 
host of shorter poems, in addition to his two long- 
est works. The Excursion and Peter Bell^ several 



ENGLISH WRITERS 97 

deserve special mention. Michael is one of the 
best of narrative poems. It is a beautiful pastoral, 
with the scene laid in " Merry Englande." Lao- 
damia is another, deserving special recognition. 
Its scene is in the mythology of ancient Greece, 
when man and the gods held converse. It is 
stately and grand and well worth reading. But 
the poem that, more than any other, gave him 
wide recognition, is the well-known Ode on the 
Intimations of Immortality^ which gives forth the 
novel and fascinating doctrine, as voiced in the 
fifth stanza : 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The soul that rises with us, our lifers star, 
Hath elsewhere had its setting, 
And Cometh from afar ! " 

Wordsworth is a great poet. He has been called 
the poet's poet because he was the inspiration of 
several succeeding romantic poets. His genius 
though great was limited, and his conception of 
life from the very nature of the case, incomplete 
and inexact. But upon the few chords of life's 
harp, of which he was master, he played with 
consummate skill. 



CHAPTER V 

MODEEN PEEIOD 

The Bomantic 3Iovement (Continued) 

XXL Samuel Tayloe Coleridge (1772-1834:). 

CoLEEiDGE was the poet of the mysterious. 
His aim is exactly opposite to that of his great con- 
temporary — Wordsworth. We have seen how 
Wordsworth was enamored with nature. How 
the sight of the humblest flower would thi^ow him 
into a rapturous and contemplative spirit. His 
plan was to make the commonplace, ordinary 
things about us attractive, while Coleridge delved 
into the realm of the mysterious and unknown, 
and sought to bring them to light and make them 
common. 

Concerning the life of Coleridge a few words 
v\ill suffice. Left an orphan at the tender age of 
nine, he faced the world and began life. Some- 
how or other he managed to acquire a good educa- 
tion, but left Cambridge University before taking 

98 



ENGLISH WRITERS 99 

a degree, and thereafter in life there were few 
things he ever completed. 

He became an intimate friend of Wordsworth 
and lil^e him settled down to write poetry in the 
serene quietness of country life. Coleridge lived 
near Wordsworth in the beautiful lake district, 
and these two, and Robert Southey, are called the 
Lake Poets. Later in life, suffering greatly from 
neuralgia he used a quack specific, and thereby 
formed the opium habit. For fifteen years all his 
energies were consumed in battling against that 
terrible drug, and at last, with wasted body, he 
was successful. But a few years afterward he 
died. 

Viewed from the standpoint of amount, Cole- 
ridge is not a great poet. Indeed it is in the field 
of philosophy and criticism that we must go to 
find the bulk of Coleridge's works. Some one has 
completely summed it up when he said " All that 
Coleridge \^T:'ote might be bound in twenty pages, 
but that should be bound in pure gold." One 
great reason why there is so little is that so much 
of his writing is fragmentary. He had wonderful 
genius in inventing plots and getting material ; he 
probed into the mysterious — his favorite field of 
action — with the acuteness of a keen psychologist 



100 ENGLISH WEITERS 

and metaphysician ; he handled this material and 
wove it into flawless English — whether poetry or 
prose — Avith the finished skill of a master ; but he 
possessed the fatal habit of putting off till the 
morrow what should have been accomplished to- 
day ; and, alas for Coleridge and the lovers of 
poetry, the morrovv^ never came. 

One of his best works, and one of the few that 
he ever completed, is the Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner, It is a weird story of how a mariner 
shot an albatross with an arrow, and how he and 
his fellow mariners suffered innumerable hardships 
on that account, and were finally all killed except 
himself, and how he was doomed to roam over the 
world and at stated intervals compelled to recite 
his story. The rhyme and meter are perfect and 
the subject matter and construction are as beauti- 
ful as they are wonderful. 

Christabel is another of his works that goes back 
into mediaeval times and into the mystery of sor- 
cery for its setting. It shows the same power of 
construction manifested in the Ancient Mariner. 
Christahel^ however, is fragmentary. But it is in 
Kulla Khan^ another of his fragments, that Cole- 
ridge's ability to produce melodious and onomato- 
poeic verse is seen at its best. The circumstances 



ENGLISH WRITERS 101 

of its composition are peculiar. Coleridge was 
reading a book of Marco Polo's, Travels in the 
East^ when he fell asleep. In his sleep he seemed 
to be composing hundreds of lines about the 
prince of Kubla Khan. Awakening he eagerly 
seized writing materials and rapidly wrote the 
lines we still have. Unfortunately he was at this 
moment interrupted by a friend and called aw^ay 
on urgent business. When he returned a few 
hours later the power of further writing had en- 
tirely left him. He laid it away waiting for the 
inspiration which never came. Until this day 
lovers of literature are regretting the interruption 
which stayed the pen while writing such a won- 
derful poem. Kubla Khan is in many respects 
the most wonderful poem in the English language. 
No one can read Kubla Khan even casually, with- 
out desiring at once to reread it again and again. 
Although only fifty-four lines long, it has never 
failed to hold its readers spellbound. The mar- 
velous adaptation of meter to sense, the mysterious 
ideas, half expressed, half inferred, and the superb 
rhyme, have a fascination that is all their own. 
One feels in reading it that its author too 

"... had fed on honey-dew 
And drank the milk of Paradise ! " 



102 ENGLISH Vv'EITERS 

Coleridge wrote a iiuuiber of shorter poems and 
odes in addition to liie ones above mentioned. 
As already intunated, it is rather in the realm 
of philosopliY and criticism that he attained his 
greatest success. Coleridge is a great man. Sox 
alone for the wonderful things he has written I'ai 
for the still greater things he niig'ht have written. 
had he not allowed the fatal habi': of procrastina- 
tion to attain such a mastery over himself. 

XXII. SiE TValtze Scott dTTl-lSSi;. 

The life, personality, and writings of Sir TTalter 
Scott 3.re entn^ely different from those of TTords- 
worth and Coleridge, his two great c*ontemporaries. 
He loved nature, but was not a di^eamy. medita- 
tive devotee like Wordsworth. He loved nature 
in the hearty, wholesome ma::ner of a person who 
is heartily enjoying iiic, Fnliri^r C-jleridge. he 
did not search the occult Orieat or delve into the 
mysterious, forbidden depth- ':'f the snpernatMral 
for his subject-matter. Iiir:-:-:! hf cuL-e I'jv his 
plots, events, and for his characters, people, that 
might have had an actual existence. Scott was a 
normal, headthv. wide-awake man. and he writes 
of people, full of red blood, who live not in dream- 
land but in the world of actual affairs. 



ENGLISH ^YEITERS 103 

Walter Scott was born in Edinburghj Scotland, 
of ancestry that represents a mingling of Scotch 
and English. "When eighteen months old he was 
attacked by a disease which left him lame for life. 
At the age of seven he Avas sent to high school at 
Edinbm^gh and his education was begun. Tradi- 
tion still tells how he was often seen, surrounded 
by a crowd of admiring students, reciting some tale, 
for Scott was master of the art of story-telling. 

But Scott's first attempt at literature was not 
along this line. He began T\4th translations, and 
next we find him weavino' all the old border ro- 
mances and stories into interesting and ringing 
verse. He repeopled the vales of Scotland as in 
the stirring days of old. AYe hear the martial pi- 
broch and the glens are dark with hordes of High- 
land foragers. There is no trace of classicism 
here. His verse flows on in narration unhindered 
by the conventionalities of art. Yet Scott's 
poetry never violates the simple laws of rhyme or 
meter. And while he was not as scholarly a poet 
as others, yet the reader will with diificulty find a 
Avord or syllable that has gone astray. One is 
impressed with the idea that meter and rhyme 
aid rather than retard the freedom. 

It was during this period that he produced his 



104 ENGLISH WRITERS 

three greatest poetical works. The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel^ Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. 
But a new favorite now appeared on the poetical 
horizon of England — none other than the dashing 
and brilliant Lord Byron. The fickle public for- 
sook Scott, with his poems ringing of the border- 
land, and turned to applaud and lionize the prom- 
ising young peer who was startling all Europe 
with his Childe Harolde. When we contrast the 
characters of Scott and Bp^on it was almost 
literally the case of the Jewish mob that surged 
about the Roman Pr^torium crying, " Away with 
Christ, give us Barabbas." In many respects, 
eighteen centuries of civilization have not mate- 
rially altered human nature. 

Scott saw his defeat, and manfully acknowl- 
edged it. But instead of giving up he drew upon 
that part of his ability so long latent — the un- 
equaled ability to write stories. And from the be- 
ginning of the famous Waverly series, for seventeen 
years, he delighted the ^vorld with his inimitable 
stories that seemed to come to being from some in- 
exhaustible source. During that period he wrote 
over thirty novels. His novels are interesting and 
instructive. Whoever has not read at least some 
of Scott's novels has missed much pleasure in the 



ENGLISH WKITERS 105 

line of wholesome and entertaining fiction. His 
novels are so well known that it scarcely seems 
necessary to mention them. Who has not heard 
of Ivanhoe or Guy Mannering or Rob Roy or 
Redgauntlet^ or Old Mortality? Who has not 
been charmed by his intensely interesting tales of 
the Crusades as given in such novels as Comit 
Robert of Paris^ or The Talisman ? For good 
clean fiction Scott cannot be outclassed. As some 
one has said : " He hurries us along at a speed 
strictly proportionate to the interest of the story." 

But just when success seemed assured, when it 
seemed as if he could at last rest from his arduous 
toil, news came of the failure of a publishing firm 
of which he was silent partner, and he suddenly 
found himself liable to a debt of ^117,000. By 
availing himself of the technicalities of the law 
he might have escaped the debt. But scorning 
such methods as dishonest, he set about with un- 
flinching courage to fulfil his obligations. In two 
years he earned his creditors almost ;^4:0,000. 
But the strain was too great. Mere flesh and 
blood gave way, and he died peacefully at his 
estate at Abbotsford. 

An eminent poet, an unequaled novelist, Scott 
was above all things a man. 



106 ENGLISH WRITERS 

XXIII. Walter Savage Lakdor (1775-1864). 

The scholarly Edward Gibbon could hardly 
have finished his monumental Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Ernjyire when there came into the ^vorld 
one w^ho was destined to a stormy career. Of all 
poets he resembles Byron most in his career. 
Passionate and impulsive to the highest degree, he 
could not help being drawn into the vortex of strife. 

He was continually getting into lawsuits and it 
is here that he wasted the fortune he inherited. 
In this he reminds us of our own writer, Cooper. 
At length, like Byron, his rashness led him into 
Avhat was practically exile. After leaving his 
family in his old age, he died in Florence. It was 
doubtless a view of his own turbulent life that 
caused him to pen the suggestive poem : 

" Child of a day, thou knowest not 
The tears that overflow thine urn, 
The gushing eyes that read thy lot, 
Nor, if thou knewest, couldst return ! 
And why the wish ! the pure and blessed 
Watch like thy mother o'er thy sleep. 
Oh, peaceful night ! Oh, envied rest ! 
Thou wilt not ever see her weep." 

The adjectives, romantic and mythological, writ- 
ten with superlatives, characterize Landor. One 



ENGLISH WRITERS 107 

has only to glance at the titles of his works to 
realize the latter, — The Shades of Agamemnon^ 
Thrasyraedes and Eunoe^ The Hamadryad^ Aeon 
and Rodojphe^ etc. His poetry never attained 
first rank, and it is through his prose works, chiefly, 
that he is famous. His extended work, Imacjinary 
Conversations^ is to be considered as strictly 
original. It consists of great numbers of sup- 
posed dialogues between the world's celebrities, 
and the background that he draws is invariably 
true to history. 

Of his poetic works, the most famous are 
Oehir^ Pericles amd Asjxtsia^ and various shorter 
poems published under the general title of Hel- 
lenics. 

To sketch, briefl}^, the life of Charles Lamb 
(1775-1834), a contemporary of Landor, we must 
swing to the opposite pole. We shall understand 
much about Lamb, if it is merely said that he was 
totally different from Landor. Modest, shy, 
patient, no greater antithesis could be found. 

Lamb's life is a noble example of loyalty to 
duty and of gentleness. Face to face with poverty 
almost all his life, working as a clerk in the office 
of the East India Company for thirty years, he 



108 ENGLISH WRITERS 

yet cares for his unfortunate sister as a mother 
and sets a standard of nobility that is well worth 
contemplating. At length being granted a pen- 
sion, he is free to devote his entire time to litera- 
ture. 

His poems and other works of like nature are of 
little consequence. The two things for which we 
remember him are his Tales from Sliakesjpeare^ 
and Essays of Elia, In the former he has given 
us the stories (designed primarily for children) of 
Shakespeare's plays and in the latter he gives us a 
mixture of humor and pathos that is at once new 
and captivating. Some of this work was done by 
himself and his sister jointly. 

Lamb is not a great writer ; but his gentle 
humor and pathos, and refined expression have 
won for him a place in literature. 

XXI7. Thomas DEQumcEY (1785-1859). 

The study of the peculiar and profound life of 
DeQuincey brings us once more into the region of 
dreams. For Thomas DeQuincey lived within 
himself. In this respect we are reminded of the 
spirit-racked Bunyan ; his fondness for the myste- 
rious is like that of Coleridge ; but his marvelous 
power of portraying the erratic flights of an 



ENGLISH WRITERS 109 

equally wonderful imagination may be likened to 
none other. 

Thomas DeQuincey doubtless received the first 
literary stimuli from his father, a Manchester 
merchant of literary tastes. However, his father 
died when he was but seven years old and his 
education was taken care of by his mother. At 
an early age he became famous for his Latin 
poetry and was able to speak (classic) Greek 
fluently at fifteen. About this time he ran away 
from the Manchester school and went to London, 
where he lived the life of a vagrant, coming 
directly in contact with the darker substrata of city 
life. After a year of aimless wandering he became 
reconciled to his people and was sent to Oxford, 
where he completed his education. 

To those who afiirm that athletics are an indis- 
pensable requisite of thorough intellectual train- 
ing, Thomas DeQuincey stands as an irrefutable 
contradiction. He was so absorbed in his lessons 
that, to use the words of a biographer, " he 
scarcely raised his head from his books." True, 
he was not a Samson physically. We are told he 
was a frail, thin man not more than five feet in 
height. But his brow was wrinkled with furrows 
of thought. And within that luminous mind 



no ENGLISH WRITERS 

DeQuincey dwelt. His body was of secondary 
consideration. Diminutive as it was, it impeded 
him. Its clayey attributes continually prevented 
liim from traversing those golden vistas which 
his ever active imagination was continually dis- 
closing to him. It was herCj and not in the 
outer world, w4th its din and ceaseless activity, 
that he literally " lived, moved and had his being." 
While still at college he had begun the use of 
opium as a stimulant and later in life being 
troubled with an irritation of the stomach, he be- 
gan to use it more freely than ever. Before long 
he found himself in the clutches of the terrible 
habit, and his imagination, ahvays active, became 
doubly more so under the influences of this drug. 
His experience in the use of opium, how great a 
grip it had upon him, how he fought it at last suc- 
cessfully, and the terrible consequences, he has 
pictured for us in his great work. Confessions of 
an English Opium Eater, Here he pictures those 
wonderful dreams. His style and diction are 
entirely appropriate. The reader feels the solid 
ground of practical every-day life slipping away 
and himself entering into the silent, tomb-like 
existence of another world where everything is 
boundless and limitless. With unparalleled and 



ENGLISH WRITERS 111 

unerring skill he leads us along in a realm where 
everything is dim, shadowy and silent. Every- 
thing is reckoned in ages, centuries and ^ons. 
We fly through the an* for countless leagues, or 
fall headlong over frightful precipices into bot- 
tomless abysses. Or again we are locked into the 
age-long solitude of some ancient tomb where 
countless eternities pass by. Or we rise to some 
giddy height and see hemispheres smite each other 
like Titanic f oemen until they are shattered into a 
myriad of fragments. 

And so the fascinating experiences continue. 
The dreams were made possible only because of 
his great erudition. Few men have been gifted 
with a mind retentive enough to enable them 
to accumulate such a vast store of general knowl- 
edge. A glance at the titles of some of his 
works will show how wide a range his learning 
could cover: Murder Considered as One of the 
Fine Arts, The Flight of a Tartar Tribe ^ Dream- 
Fugue on the Theme of Sudden Death, Suspiria 
De Profundus^ Levana and Our Ladies of 
Sorrow. 

These two thino-s — his imao^ination and erudi- 
tion — have never ceased to excite the wonder of 
men of letters wherever he is known, and he will 



112 ENGLISH WAITERS 

always stand as one of the greatest subjective 
prose writers of literature. 

XXV. Geoege Goedon (Loed) Byeon (1788- 

1824). 

Born of parentage noted for fighting and fierce 
temperament, we could hardly expect the per- 
sonality of Lord Byron to be other than it was. 
His father deserted his mother shortly after he 
was born, and he was left to the care of his 
mother " who alternately smothered him with 
caresses and beat him with the fire shovel." It is 
not to be supposed that the inborn hauteur of 
Byron was rendered more angelic by such treat- 
ment. Some one has very aptly said that he had 
three misfortunes — his mother, his title, and his 
lameness. 

His first poetic venture met with harsh treat- 
ment at the hands of critics, and stung to madness 
he struck back at them in the withering satke, 
English Bards and Scotch Revieicers, He then 
spent some time traveling and gave us as the 
result of his observations the first two cantos of 
Childe Harolde^ v^hich met with instant and un- 
precedented applause. Never in the annals of 
literature did a writer so suddenly spring into 



ENGLISH WRITERS 113 

fame. The public which had been charmed by 
the heroic tales of border warfare and medieval 
tournaments as told by the stirring verse of Scott, 
now turned en masse to the dashing young peer 
who as Childe Harolde was painting before the 
world, on a canvas of poetry, the historic scenery 
of all Europe. His poems appeared in rapid suc- 
cession, each time with a storm of popular ap- 
proval. But his favor was short lived as it was 
sudden. For in 1816 he became divorced from 
his wife. What the reasons were, or who was to 
blame, was never known, but the public laid the 
guilt on Byron and he suddenly found himself 
ostracized. Spurning the country that had so 
treated him, he left England never to return. 

In 1823 he chartered a vessel and sailed for 
Greece, to aid them in the war for independence 
they were then waging against the Turks. But 
before he could take an active part in the war, he 
died of a fever in the camp at Missolonghi. 

Revolutionary, dissipated and headstrong, Byron 
was not without his virtues. As one critic says, 
" there were two Byrons, one passionate, haughty 
and insolent ; the other kind, generous and noble." 
Whether it was his fault or the fault of society, it 
is undeniably certain that Byron and society were 



114 ENGLISH WRITERS 

hopelessly out of tune T\itli each other. He 
rebelled at eveiythiug. His proud natm^e bent 
itself for combat at the least sign of restraint. 
He bowed the knee to none. His disposition to 
his fellow man was peculiar. As some one has 
well said, " he was insolent to his superiors, 
haughty to his equals, and kind to his inferiors.*' 
His untamed natm^e is seen in Manfred where the 
hero J surrounded by friends and feeling the end, 
cries out : 

'* Back ye baffled fiends, 
The hand of death is on me — but not on yours ! 

But the fact that there is another side to his 
nature can also be seen. His Einstle to Augusta 
is a singularly tender poem. He starts out by 
saying : 

*' My sister, my sweet sister ; if a name 
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine 
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim 
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine." 

In his Fare Thee VTell, widtten presumably to 
his vrife after they separated, he voices a senti- 
ment and a tenderness that seems strangely foreign. 
The first stanza contains the oft quoted words : 



ENGLISH WRITERS 115 

" Fare thee well, and if forever, 
Still forever, fare thee well ; 
Even tho' unforgiving, never 
^Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.'* 

There are tew lives indeed, that, however cold 
and unf orbidding the exterior, do not have a kind, 
gentle heart for the favored few they love and 
trust. Byron was such a one. But continually 
baited and harried by society and the existing or- 
der of things that harmonized ill with his unique 
nature, it is small wonder that his thoughts and 
actions were those of conflict rather than peaceful 
tranquillity. As he retrospectively views himself 
in the Epistle to Augusta he completely sums up 
his life : 

" My life was a contest, since the day 
That gave me being, gave me that which marred 
The gift — a fate, or will, that walked astray ; 
And I at times have found the struggle hard. 
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay." 

Byron's works fall into three classes — Narrative, 
satirical and dramatical. Under the first head 
may be grouped The Bride of Ahyclos^ The Giaour, 
Don Juan^ Childe Harolde^ The Prisoner of 
Chillon^ and Mazeppa. Under the second, Eng- 



116 ENGLISH WRITERS 

lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers^ and The Vision 
of Judgment. Under the third, Manfred^ and 
Cain, 

The Vision of Judgment shows Byron at his 
best in satu-'e. Southev had written a poem brim- 
ming over with fulsome eulogy for George the 
Thu^d. Byi^on had small respect for the former 
and still less for the latter and the result was The 
Vision of Judgment^ or a pretended description of 
the scene in heaven when the soul of George the 
Third ascended. 

Manfred is a noble piece of work, but like many 
of the world's famous dramas — the Book of Job, 
for instance — was not written to be staged. On 
readino^ Manfred one at once thinks of Marlowe's 
Dr, Faustus, The scene is in the Alps Mountains, 
and the character,~a Byron m disguise, — who 
has delved too deeply into the mysteries of life, 
becomes tu^ed of living, and the friends who be- 
fore were compelled to serve him, appear and 
overcome him. In addition there are a great num- 
ber of short poems otherwise classified as Poems 
Set to Music^ and Hebreio Ilelodies. 

Byron was a voluminous writer, but he wrote in 
haste and spent little time in polishing. Conse- 
quently his works are not so elegant as they might 



ENGLISH WRITERS 117 

be, and not infrequently errors of grammar are 
met with. Indeed he is at times undignified enough 
to stoop to actual profanity. But throughout all 
his productions, no matter where the scene is laid 
or what the nature of the plot may be, Byron 
has been able to produce but one character, and 
that is — Byron. 

XXYI. Peecy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). 

Modest, sensitive, shrinking and effeminate, with 
a personality both impractical and visionary, 
Shelley found himself out of tune and at variance 
with the stern and moral world in which he lived. 
He was a continual misfit from his views on 
society to the exquisite fineness of his poetry. 

True, his ideas of marriage and society are not 
what we would consider decent, and after making 
all due allowances, there are still some things that 
Shelle}^ did that must be called wrong in no un- 
certain tone. But whatever his faults, the true 
admu^er of Shelley likes to think that he did what 
he thought was right. 

While still in his teens he was sent to Oxford 
where, after five months, he was expelled for his 
pamphlet, The Necessity for Atheism . Thereupon 
he married Harriet Westbroke — he was nineteen 



118 ENGLISH WRITERS 

and she was sixteen — and after wandering about 
for some time they became reconciled to their 
parents. He soon afterward met a noted reformer 
named Godwin, who believed in the free love 
theory, and Shelley embraced the new doctrine to 
such an extent that he deserted his child-wife and 
eloped with the reformer's daughter, Mary Godwin, 
whom he married when his first wife died. Later 
he traveled on the continent, and in Italy com- 
posed much of his best poetry. 

Shelley's life was one continual quest for beauty. 
It was the guiding star of his existence, but it was 
a fruitless quest. It seemed to be just within 
reach, but when he pursued it, it floated on like 
the '^ will-o'-the-wisp." It was ever in his mind's 
eye, but mirage-like could never be attained. 
Hence Shelley began to regard beauty with a 
reverential awe. He tells us in his Hymn to In- 
tellectital Beauty that : 

" The awful shadow of some unseen power 
Floats tho' unseen amongst us — visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower." 

And in the next stanza remembering how often 
it has eluded him he asks : 



ENGLISH WRITERS 118 

" Spirit of Beauty . . . where art thou gone ? 
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, 
This dim, vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? " 

All of Shelley's poetiy might be considered auto- 
biographical, but Alastor^ one of his earliest works, 
particularly so. It represents a youth traveling 
all over the world in the eager search for that 
which is perfectly beautiful. After traversing all 
the countries of the earth he is led by intuition up 
a lonely river in Asia, and there in a rocky gorge, 
made ghastly bright by the rising moon, he real- 
izes that his search was futile, but dies happy, 
knowing that what he failed to attain in this 
world will be made possible in the next. 

In Italy Shelley was so impressed with the 
charms of Emilia Viviani, his wife's maid, that he 
composed EjpipsycMdion in her honor. Shelley 
thought that at last he had found the perfection 
of beauty, and that this perfection was incarnate 
in the being of Emilia Viviani. Years before he 
had thought the same of Harriet Westbroke, but 
finding out his error, he had forsaken her for 
Mary Godwin — his present wife. And so, while 
he does not desert his wife, yet he yearns for 
the beautiful Emilia, and urges that they fly 
together to 



120 ENGLISH WRITERS 

"... An Isle under the lonion skies, 

Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, 
The blue ^gean girds this chosen home, 
^Yith ever-changing sound and light and foam, 
Kissing the sifted sands," 

He compares Harriet Westbroke to a comet 
that crossed his path, and his wife to the moon, 
but Emilia is the resplendent sun, and boldly as- 
serts the dangerous doctrine 

'* That love makes all things equal." 

But barring its teachings, Ejjijysychidion is a 
magnificent piece of literature. The wooing 
words, the splendid imagery, and the fine con- 
trasts, all blend and flow in such gentle, undulat- 
ing pentameters that scarce a harsh syllable ap- 
pears to mar the beauty. 

It was the death of Keats that moved him to 
write Adonais^ his masterpiece, and the second 
great elegiac in the English language. It is 
closely modeled after Milton's Lycidas^ and differs 
from that much as the two poets differed in their 
lives and personalities. With the genius and skill 
of a master, he makes all nature to mourn the 
death of Adonais. He tells us that 



ENGLISH WRITERS 121 

" Morning sought her eastern watchtower, and her hair unbound, 
Wet with the tears that should adorn the ground, 
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day ; 
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, 
Pale ocean in uno.uiet slumber lay, 
And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay." 

But after running the whole gamut of human 
emotions, after questioning whether after all life 
is worth the living, his impulsive spmt becomes 
subdued, and in the measured tones of a philoso- 
pher he bids us peace : 

" Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep- 
He hath awakened from the dream of life — 
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 
AVith phantoms an unprofitable strife." 

In addition to the poems already noted his great 
lyrical drama Prometheus Uiihound^ Queen Mah^ 
The Revolt of Islam^ and The Sejisitive Plant 
might be mentioned. His odes To a ShylarJc^ To 
the Cloudy To the West Wind^ and To Nighty rank 
with those of Keats as the best in the language. 

Prometheus Unbound^ a lyrical drama, is his 
daring as well as his greatest work. The drama 
is a gigantic allegory starting with the fable of 
Prometheus chained to a rock by Jupiter and con- 
demned to have his vitals torn out daily by a vul- 



122 ENGLISH WRITERS 

ture. Prometheus is humanity, and Jupiter is the 
system of religion which we obey. The story as 
he tells it is that a conspiracy was formed on Mt. 
Olympus which dethroned Jupiter and in the new 
order of things, Prometheus was liberated. The 
allusion is only too apparent. Mankind must al- 
ways suffer and can never be free as long as they 
fear religion ! and he dwells at great length on how 
a veritable golden age will ensue, once the old 
order of things is overthrown. But it is not for 
us to discuss the theology of the work, but the art, 
and assuredly there is much of the latter present. 
In the short lyrics, interspersed here and there, 
Shelley is at his best. The imagery in these is 
flawless. For an idea of the exquisite beauty of 
some of the parts, consider but one line, where he 
talks of 

"An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire," 

and by multiplying one's imagination, it may be 
possible to faintly picture the beauty of Prome- 
theus Unbound, 

As to Shelley's poetical ability, there has been 
much discussion. His poetry, in many respects, 
is so different from the poetry of others that it 
must be judged in a class by itself. Shelley is a 



ENGLISH WRITERS 123 

poet of the ethereal. He is so light and evanescent 
that our senses, clogged v\'ith the clay of this 
world, can with diificulty perceive him. And he 
soars into altitudes that are quite beyond us. How 
then can we judge him ? 

That is Shelley the poet. But Shelley the man 
has still many of the attributes of other people. 
He realizes that he is held back by the same clay 
that restrains other mortals, and in his eager de- 
sire to snap the bonds and overtake his imagina- 
tion in its lofty soaring, he breaks forth with pas- 
sionate earnestness in the matchless lines To the 
West Wind: 

*' ^lake me thy lyre even as the forest is : 
What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
Sweet tho' in sadness, Be thou, spirit fierce. 
My spirit I Be thou me, impetuous one ! " 

To sum it all up, we must say that to the great 
mass of readers, Shelley's poetry will, indeed, ap- 
pear as " sounding brass and tinkling cymbal." 
But to the few who are able to climb, even partly, 
the dizzy heights to which he has soared, Shelley 
must ever appear as a transcendental genius and 
one of the g-reatest masters of the Enolish Ivric. 



124 ENGLISH WRITERS 

XXVII. JoHK Keats (1795-1821). 

While a contemporary of Byron and Shelley, 
Keats was quite different from both of them. Of 
the twOj however, Keats was more nearly akin to 
Shelley, both in personality and as regards the 
subject-matter of his poetry. To him beauty was 
everything. It was not a vast something, unat- 
tainable by mortals, as Shelley thought, but some- 
thing that actually existed and in the reach of all, 
and to be enjoyed as much as possible. As 
Wordsworth was lost to everything in the sublime 
contemplation of nature, so Keats was enraptured 
at the sight of everything that was beautiful, that 

<* Beauty is truth, truth, beauty, that is all 
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know," ^ 

w^as literally his creed. And it was this principle 
so strongly imbedded in his nature that led him to 
become the poet that he was, as we shall see. 

John Keats was born of humble parentage near 
London. His father was manager of a livery 
barn. He was sent to various schools by his 
father, but at fifteen he was left an orphan. 
About this time his guardian took him from school 
and apprenticed him to a surgeon. But he had 

^ Ode on a Grecian Urn. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 125 

little or no liking for the profession, and one 
afternoon when he should have been listening to 
a discourse on surgery, his mind wandered out of 
the room and into the realm of nature w^here 
beauty held fuU sway. So he gave up surgery 
and began to write poetry. In this Keats was 
different from most poets, as it was his only means 
of earning a livelihood. 

His first work Endymion was severely criticized. 
It was an immature vv^ork, and while it contained 
many beautiful passages, w^as not what it could or 
should have been. But Keats' sensitive nature re- 
coiled from the harsh criticism, and as he died but 
a few years later his death was popularly believed 
to have been due to the uncalled-for censure. In 
the opening lines of Endymion his creed of beauty 
is clearly stated : 

" A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 
Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
Pass into nothingness ; but will still keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams." 

The Eve of St. Agnes is a beautiful story whose 
setting is laid deep in the gorgeous past '' when 
knighthood was in flower." The story is told 



126 EJs^GLISH VrRITERS 

and the scenes are painted by the beauty-loving 
Keats with true artistic skill. TThen we consider 
that this finely wrought poem appeared soon after 
the brutal censui^e of his Endymion^ we can be- 
lieve that it was trulj^ 

"... music yearning like a god in pain." ^ 

The Pot of Basil is a rather gruesome tale, the 
foundation of which is laid in Italy. The story is 
touching, but the flavor is distinctly unhke that of 
Keats. It is in Hyperion^ however, that we feel 
that Keats has reached his high water mark in 
lofty style and theme. Note the stately manner 
in wliich it begins : 

<< Deep in the shady sadness of a vale 
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, 
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone. 
Still as the silence round about his lair ; 
Forest on forest hung about his head 
Like cloud on cloud." 

It tells how the throne of Saturn, ruler of the 
universe, was overthrown by other gods ; how 
the Titans were bound, and how the old order of 

1 Eve of St. Agnes. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 127 

things was superseded by the new. It is masterly 
epic and we read the three books with increas- 
ing interest only to discover with regret that 
the work is a fragment, having never been com- 
pleted. 

Much of Keats' fame rests on his odes. Of these 
his Ode on Indolence^ To Psyche^ To a Nightingale^ 
On Melancholy^ On Fame^ and On a Grecian Urn^ 
are considered the best in the language. The ode 
On a Greciam^ Urn starts out with the immortal 
lines : 

" Thou still unravished bride of quietness, 
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
Sylvian historian, who canst thus express 
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme." 

But the beauty-filled life which promised so 
much was destined soon to cease. For consump- 
tion began to show itself and from the first was 
seen to be incurable. With the fatal disease fasten- 
ing itself upon him he left England and lingered 
for a few months in Naples. But it was the be- 
ginning of the end, and with the expression, 
" Thank God, it has come," he died. 

While on board ship, on his last earthly voyage 
he composed the beautiful lines : 



128 ENGLISH WRITERS 

*' Bright star ! would that I were steadfast as thou art- 
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night 
And watching with eternal lids apart, . . . 

* -Jf -X- -K- -Jf 

Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast 
To feel forever its soft fall and swell, 
Awake forever in a sweet unrest, 
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath 
And so live ever — or else swoon to death." ^ 

^ Bright Star^ etc. 



CHAPTEE YI 

THE VICTOEIAN AGE 

(a) The Prose Writers 

XXYIII. The Yictoeian Age. 

A COEEECT understanding of the Yictorian Age 
is essential in order to be able to account for the 
great prose and poetical masterpieces which have 
been produced. We have seen in the past how 
powerfully the Elizabethan Age influenced authors 
and how, coming as it did, it produced a dazzling 
glory in the realm of letters that has never been 
surpassed. And so for reasons quite similar we 
are compelled to devote some time to the Yictorian 
Age — the greatest age in the history of English 
Literature. 

Much might be summed up hj saying that the 
Victorian Age is second to the Elizabethan Age. 
The forces which were the cause of their great- 
ness were in many respects similar. Both are 
signalized by epoch-making inventions and discov- 
eries which are most potent in rendering life more 
129 



130 ENGLISH ^yKITERS 

comfortable. Both are marked by great discov- 
eries. At this point they differ somewhat. In 
the Elizabethan Age, the known world w^as small 
in comparison to the unknown. Trade with the 
East was for the first tune being put on a secure 
basis, and the spices, silks and gems of the luxu- 
rious Orient were becoming part of the well-to-do 
Englishman's life. While across the dark Atlantic 
in the crimson Occident, a new world was being 
brought to notice, which promised the realization 
of the most cherished hopes. 

But in the lapse of time practically all of the 
world has been discovered and explored. England 
has annexed the Indian Empire on the east, while 
on the west the New World has become no longer 
rosy possibility, but a prosaic reality. Hence the 
epoch-making inventions of the Victorian Age have 
not been in the physical world, but in the mental 
world. Modern skill has enabled the manufactui^- 
ing of better scientific instruments, with the result 
that the moist earth and the stellar universe told 
more marvelous tales than heretofore. Scientific 
data of untold value was thus accumulated. Then 
arose such men as Spencer, Huxley and Darwin, 
who strove to unite these strands into an unbreak- 
able cable of philosophy. Darwin startled the 



ENGLISH WRITERS 131 

world with his Origin of Sjyecies and the theory 
of evolution. Astronomers were brought face to 
face with the nebular hypothesis, and the fact that 
the laws of nature on this world hold good on the 
most distant planet and star. Hitherto myste- 
rious diseases were being a^nalyzed and cures dis- 
covered for those before deemed incurable. The 
result was that the equilibrium of the thinking 
world was for a time shaken, and as many of the 
conclusions at first sight seemed at variance with 
the cardinal teachings of the Church, the latter 
was forced into a conflict, and made the target for 
infidels and agnostics. Science propounded these 
seeming incompatible questions to the Church and 
sneeringiy demanded an answer. The Church, un- 
able for a time to maintain the argument, lost 
many able men who became infidels. Tennyson's 
whole life was a struggle between an intellect that 
could not be satisfied, and an inborn faith that 
could not be silenced. But man}^ others were 
completely swept over the abyss. It was an era 
of New Thought and marked the formation of 
strange cults and isms for the credulous and 
seduced. 

We who are favorably situated in the present 
day have, from the vantage point of the twentieth 



132 ENGLISH WRITERS 

century, seen with profit the struggle of the nine- 
teenth, and its issue. That when the din had sub- 
sided, and the smoke had lifted, the two contest- 
a.nts — science and religion — were after all not 
apart, that both were entirely compatible and con- 
sistent with each other, and that the plants and 
the rocks and the stars, when rightly read, told 
the same mysterious tale of a loving Father that 
has so long been recorded on the wonderful pages 
of the Book of Life. 

XXIX. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). 

The Victorian Age is famous as much for its 
prose writers as for its poets — if not more. It 
will be our plan to consider the prose writers first. 
They roughly fall into three classes, (1) Philo- 
sophical writers ; (2) Historians ; (3) Critics. Of 
these we can devote space to but one representa- 
tive of the first two classes, and two of the last. 

Thomas Carlyle, like the immortal Burns, was 
a native of Scotland. He was born at Dumfries- 
shire, of the kind of parents that make a nation 
strong. They intended him for the ministry, and 
to this end his education was planned. But when 
he became grown up he developed views, relig- 
iously, that prevented this. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 133 

After turning his attention to teaching and 
law, respectively, he began to contribute articles 
to various papers, and so began his literary career. 
He began to study German, and as regards his 
literary work, this was the most important event 
of his life. 

Carlyle's greatest work which gives him rank as 
a philosopher — and that too as most original — is 
Sartor Resartus (literally, the tailor patched), in 
which he gives to the world his Philosoj)hy of 
Clothes, In it he pretends to have discovered the 
manuscripts of an eccentric and philosophic old 
German, " Teufelsdrockh," who lived the life of a 
hermit in the town of -' Weissnichtwo " {i. e.^ I 
know not where). But while the odd name and 
whimsical manner of presentation may seem to 
give a farcical or humorous context to the book, 
the reader soon discovers his error. For the 
queer old Teufelsdrockh, perched in his loneh^ 
room high up in one of the tall houses, looks 
over the sleeping town of Weissnichtwo and utters 
philosophy that would credit a Solon or a Socrates. 
In this work Carlyle ])oints out that the physical 
world about us, our very bodies, are but '' clothes " 
of the inward spirit. That the time will come 
when this body must die and disintegrate, as 



134 ENGLISH WRITERS 

thousands before and after have done and will do, 
and that even the very heavens that " hang about 
us as a vesture " will be swept away, and only the 
spirit hitherto concealed shall endure. Let not 
the reader think that Carlyle is a second-rate 
preacher who seeks notoriety by cheap sentimen- 
talism. Far from it. But he cries in stentorian 
tones against the shams of society, and deals the 
petty tyrannies, concerning which we have been 
so long silent, their well merited death-blows. 
Sartor Besartus must alwaj^s rank among the 
great works of this age. 

His History of the French Revolution is another 
epoch-making work which ranks him among the 
great historians. It is found on the shelves of every 
library and its very name has become a household 
word. He relates the stirring times of the French 
Revolution in a way that captivates the reader's 
interest from the first. His vigorous style, the 
use of the historical present tense, and the skill 
with which the scenes are portrayed, have, to- 
gether, produced on the pages of historical nar- 
rative a dramatic effect that is almost without 
parallel. 

Among his other works might be mentioned 
his History of Frederick the Great^ Heroes arid 



ENGLISH WRITERS 135 

Hero-worship^ and the Life of Schiller^ as well as 
his German translations. 

Carlyle's style is unique. It might be summed up 
in the words massive, rugged and sincere. He se- 
cures the highest rhetorical effect without intend- 
ing it. In reading his works the reader encoun- 
ters a masculine strength that is entirely new, bufc 
after the first effect of strangeness is worn off, the 
effect of the novel mannerisms are not unpleasing. 
As a master of the English vocabulary he often 
uses odd and semi-obsolete terms. That, and the 
custom of capitalizing the nouns (a habit derived, 
doubtless, from the German, of which he was an 
enthusiastic student), gives his works a vigor and 
strength seldom met with elsewhere. 

XXX. Thomas Babii^gton Macaulay (1800- 

1859). 
Few men, indeed, are found whose genius en- 
ables them to live a life as successful and many- 
sided as the life of Macaula}^ Macaulay was a 
very precocious child, and, as is usual in such cases, 
an insatiable reader. This trait, coupled with an 
almost perfect memory — a memory so perfect that 
he is said to have been able to repeat Paradise 
Lost — gave him such general knowledge of affairs 



136 ENGLISH WRITERS 

covering a wide range of subjects, that he very 
nearly approaches the plane of erudition occupied 
by the great DeQuincey. 

Making the most of this gift, Macaulay was en- 
abled to play with credit the role of poet, histo- 
rian, essayist, and statesman. As a poet he has 
given us his interesting Lays of Ancient Bonie^ 
which contains such selections as The Battle of 
Lahe Begillus^ Horatius at the Bridge — familiar 
to every schoolboy. His poetry is all purely nar- 
rative, and is a close parallel to Scott's, with the 
exception that instead of tales of border warfare, 
he sought among the classic tales of early Rome 
for his subject-matter. As a historian he has 
given us his History of England from the Acces- 
sion of James 11^ which, next to Green's Short 
History of English People^ is considered one of 
the most scholarly and polished histories ever 
written. As an essayist he is seldom excelled. 
In his essays on Clive^ Hastings^ Milton^ Johnson 
and others, he has enabled us to associate with the 
characters as though they were living. 

As an essayist and historian, Macaulay's style 
is clear, energetic and forceful. It is, in fact, 
hard to improve upon. ISTo thinking man can 
read his history without being charmed. There 



ENGLISH WRITERS 137 

he has the added quality of oratory, and he gives 
us innumerable selections that might rightly be 
called poetical prose, and might serve as models of 
perfect prose composition. But as a poet, Ma- 
caulay falls short when we judge him by the type 
of great English poets. The case can be tersely 
stated by saying that Macaulay was a second-rate 
poet because he was a first-rate prose writer. He 
represented a large class of complacent people 
whose equilibrium is undisturbed because they 
fail to see anything wrong on the surface. He 
was too well satisfied with the condition of affairs 
to delve deep or soar high into the unknown realm 
of the possible and the probable. " An acre in 
Middlesex is better than a province in Utopia," 
was his favorite maxim. The many voices of that 
great "Within- World— that world where the 
mighty geniuses of such men as Bunyan, Words- 
worth and DeQuincey have their existence — were 
unheard by him. He could not appreciate the 
fine flights of fancy as voiced by these writers be- 
cause he was ignorant of their source. His eyes 
saw only the material greatness of his native 
England, and as a result he lost that ''better 
portion" which is the heritage of those who 
break through the gilded covering of material 



138 ENGLISH WRITEES 

life and seek for truth in the unexplored regions 
beyond, 

XXXI. JoHK EusKm (1819-1900). 

Critic, economist and thinker, John Euskin 
stands as peer to the ablest among his fellow men. 
"With ideas misunderstood and motives miscon- 
strued, with his cherished plans denounced as vi- 
sionary, and himself fanatic — he still pursued his 
plans, dictated by the clear voice of a clean con- 
science, and with none but a just God to uphold 
him. The time is coming when Euskin will be 
hailed as a profound philosopher and a true phi- 
lanthropist ; when his plan of society will be con- 
sidered as the natural resultant of a great and 
noble mind, and not the shallow scheme of a harm- 
less maniac. But time is required. It requires 
not one generation but many generations — aye 
even centuries, before the noble and unselfish ideas 
of a great mind filter through the scum and dross 
of this world's wickedness and shine with the re- 
fulgent beauty of true goodness and true nobility. 
Homer alive begged in his native city, but the honor 
of being called the birthplace of Homer dead was 
claimed by seven cities. Washington, praying be- 
hind the snow-drifts of Valley Forge, is made the 



ENGLISH WRITERS 139 

target for intrigues and cabals ; Lincoln, pacing the 
lonely chambers of the "White House in the dim 
hours of the morning, is the object of abuse, defama- 
tion and lastly the assassin's steel. But to-day a 
proud and vainglorious nation counts them among 
her greatest. Milton, blind and neglected, is thrust 
into obscurity and hides for his life. But to-day 
after a lapse of three centuries an equally proud 
nation recognizes in his masterpieces the stamp of 
a mighty genius. And so to this endless catalogue 
of examples that began when the world began 
and will end only when the world ends, Ruskin 
forms no exception. 

Ruskin was a lover of the beautiful. He loved 
nature and he loved all the beautiful things that 
man's genius enabled him to make. But he be- 
lieved that nature in her pristine glory was more 
perfect and more beautiful than anything that man 
could produce. He was an enemy of the city be- 
cause it was artificial, because it was the breeding 
place of dirt, squalor and unsightliness, and the 
yet more hideous evils of depravity and immoral- 
ity. To him the life, wholesome and simple, and 
close to the matchless scenery of natui*e which 
comes perfect from the hand of an all- wise God, 
was infinitely to be preferred to the artificial 



140 ENGLISH WRITERS 

luxuries, the deceitful shams, and gilded restraints 
of city life. And so he sought constantly by 
voice, by example, and by money and other 
material aids, to educate humanity to better modes 
of living and thinking. Especially did Ruskin 
labor with the poor. He built them model homes, 
and sought in every way to better their lot. And 
yet, in spite of all this, history regards his reforms 
— actuated by the purest and most sincere 
motives — as impracticable ! 

Born of gifted and artistic parents and reared 
in a Christian home, Ruskin had the advantage of 
rare heredity and rare training. He himself tells 
us that nothing was ever told him that was not 
true, nor was anything ever promised him that was 
not given. Is it any wonder that at the age of 
eight he was the author of works of biography, 
travel, history, and theology ? 

His works are principally on criticism and 
economy. To these he has given strange and 
fanciful names. His most popular work is Sesame 
and Lilies, Among others the most noteworthy 
are : The Stones of Venice^ The Seven Lamps of 
Architecture^ Modern Painters^ Unto This Last^ 
Fors Clavigera^ and The Crown of Wild Olive, 

Ruskin's style is wonderful. Adjectives that 



ENGLISH WRITERS 141 

apply to some iridescent raindrop seem the only 
ones suitable to employ. It is by no means too 
much to say that it is a model of strength and 
beauty. His diction is not harsh nor is it filled 
with words of erudite length, but it flows along as 
smoothly and transparently as the limpid wavelets 
of some sunny stream that he may be describing. 
Much of his subject-matter, though vital, would 
in the hands of another seem prosaic and uninter- 
esting. But Euskin, with the wonderful alchemy 
of skill and kindness, transforms it into radiant, 
living English, glowing with a message as noble as 
the heart that brought it forth. 

XXXIL Matthew Ae^old (1822-1888). 

Of the great lights of the Victorian Age, other 
than the ones under discussion, we must mention 
some of the most important. Among these, the 
stern, apostolic character of John Henry Xewman 
(1801-1890), theologian, stands out in relief. So 
also does that of John Richard Green (1837-1 883), 
who has given us in his Short History of the Eng- 
lish People one of the most complete and scholarly 
histories ever written, a work that is used as a 
text-book in numberless institutions of learning. 
So also is James Antony Froude (1818-1891), who 



142 ENGLISH WRITERS 

has given us a most polished work in his History of 
England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of 
the Sjxtnish Armada. We now turn our attention 
to Matthew Arnold, poet, critic, and theologian. 

Matthew Arnold is another of those great lights, 
whose life and writings faithfully mirror the in- 
tellectual advancement and the moral upheaval of 
the Yictorian Age. Like some of our illustrious 
New Englanders, Arnold descended from a long 
line of educated parentage. His father, Dr. 
Thomas Arnold, with whom we always associate 
the name Rugby, — he being the head master of 
that famous school for boys— and his grandfather 
were ministers, and prominent in literary and 
ecclesiastical affau^s. If heredity counts for any- 
thing — and we know that it does — Arnold was 
the recipient of a wonderful heritage of faith and 
intellectuality. It would be interesting to know 
just how the possession of this impetus helped him 
to meet the stormy issues of his time. 

The Yictorian Age, as we have seen, was the 
time when the great conflict between science and 
religion was fiercest. All the great men of the 
age, whether willingly or not, were, from the 
very nature of the case, drawn into the struggle. 
The minds of those who espoused the Church had 



ENGLISH WRITERS 143 

not broadened enough, nor had the intellects of 
those who defended science advanced far enough, 
to see that in the last analysis there was no cause 
for dispute, but that each was the champion of the 
other, and that Faith and Reason were not at 
enmity with each other but were indissolubly bound 
together. 

In common with others, Arnold was plunged 
into this maelstrom of conflict, and thereafter his 
life became a struo^-oie. TVe shall see later that 
the great Tennyson was similarly entangled, and 
how he struggled. 'We shall see how that after a 
lifetime of conflict, Tennyson at last touched the 
unshaken foundations of the Rock of Ages and 
stood secure, Xot so with Arnold. Fi^htino: all 
his life against doubt, he seems to come no nearer 
the truth. Perhaps we shall never understand the 
extent to which Arnold wrestled with these doubts. 
Some faint idea we can glean fi^om his poetry. 
The universe was to him an unsolved problem ; 
the very planets in the skies interrogated him, 

" And the calm moonlight seemed to say : 
* Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast, 
Which neither deadens into rest, 
Nor even feels the fiery glow 
That whirls the spirit from itself away, 
But fluctuates to and fro ? ' " 



144 ENGLISH WRITERS 

And the more he seeks to grapple with these 
doubts the more he realizes that this world is a 
" brazen prison " from w^hich but few can make 
their escape, and in desperation he cries out : 

" Is there no life, but these alone ? 
Madman or slave, must man be one ? " 

In the Stanzas from the Gi'ande Chartreuse he 
speaks of 

'' Wandering between two worlds, one dead 
The other powerless to be born." 

And in Dover Beach he saj^s that 

"... We are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night." 

Such is the melancholy refrain throughout his 
poetry. And while far from being an atheist, an 
infidel, or an agnostic, he is equally far from being 
a Christian, and the best we can say of him is 
that he was a free-thinker with his mind open to 
receive the truth. 

Although winning distinction as a critic and a 
theologian, it is as a poet that we wish to view 
him. Being in contact with poetry all his life and 
having an appreciative sense, Arnold naturally 



ENGLISH WRITERS 145 

wrote poetry as an outlet to his feelings. While 
in reading his poetry one is impressed with the 
fact that it is not as free and spontaneous as it 
might be, or as true poetic feeling would produce 
it, yet it is far from true to say that his poems are 
artificial and musty with scholarship. Arnold is 
not considered a great poet, nor indeed does he 
pose as such. But he is the author of some beau- 
tiful and artistic poetry. Aside from the fact 
that he is prone to take us off on long and often 
tedious similies in his narratives, we must admit 
that his verses bear the imprint of one who is 
both a poet and a scholar. 

His important works are the Ohermann Once 
More^ Sohrab and Hustum^ Thyrsis^ Stanzas to the 
Memory of Ohermann^ Stanzas from the Grande 
Chartreuse, Balder Dead^ Tristram and Iseult^ 
The Forsahen Merman^ A Summer Nighty and 
many other works of criticism. For Arnold was 
one of the great critics of the times. 



CHAPTEE yil 
THE VICTOEIAN AGE (Continued) 

(&) The Poets 

XXXIII. Alfeed (Loed) TE]S'iq'YSo:N- (1809- 

1892). 
Just a trifle over a hundred years ago there 
was born m Somersby, Lincohishire, to the Eev. 
George Clayton Tennyson, a son that was in after 
years to charm the English speaking races with 
the incomparable grandeur of his poetry. Shy 
and sensitive, young Tennyson lived the life of 
the average English boy. Like Shakespeare, he 
roamed the fields of his native shire and drank in 
the beauties of nature that in after years should 
be given to us in his verses. After finishing the 
w^ork at a near-by grammar school, he w^ent to 
Trinity College, w^iiich on account of his father's 
death he left in 1830, without taking a degree. 
Three years later his life w^as again saddened 
by the loss of his bosom friend, Arthur Henry 
Hallam, a loss which was to give to the world the 
greatest of elegies — Li Memoriam, 
146 



ENGLISH ^YRITERS 147 

The works of Alfred Tennyson mark the cul- 
mination of Anglo-Saxon poetiy. Since the time 
that the wandering scop and gieeman chanted the 
deeds of some illustrious chieftain in the bar- 
barous mead-halls of our Saxon forefathers, to the 
advent of Tennyson, a span of nearly fourteen 
centuries, the innate strength and genius of this 
the greatest of races has been slowly but surely 
evolving and building up. 

But it required all these long years before a 
poet could be produced who should be a fitting 
topstone to the Anglo-Saxon pyramid of achieve- 
ment in the realm of verse. 

Tennyson's poetry is great because it is Catholic 
in scope. No one is too unlettered or too learned 
to understand and appreciate it. From the ab- 
sorbing series of Arthur stories to the philo- 
sophic depth of De Profundis and In 2Iemoriarii^ 
there is a range of poetry graduated to the wants 
and desires of all. He partakes of the greatness 
of all the great writers. He has the psychologic 
insight of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, 
the narrative powers of Scott, the strength of 
Byron, the lyric sweetness of Shellej^, and the 
beauty of Keats — all toned down and welded 
together, a truly wonderful amalgamation. 



148 ENGLISH WRITEES 

Above all things, Tennyson's poems (/. e.^ the 
non-narrative poems) are autobiographical, vrith- 
out being so intended. An intelligent study of 
these poems is a study of his life. One feels, 
indeed, that Tennyson, in the widest sense, was 
not a poet by determination, but rather by chance. 
That the real vocation of that mighty intellect 
was to grapple with the great problems of society, 
of philosophy, of theology, and that his great 
poetical masterpieces are but records of those 
struggles. 

One of the most interestmg facts along this 
line is the change in his outlook upon the world. 
Just what Tennyson's outlook, as revealed in his 
poetry, was is something that, for some unknown 
reason, is not generally known. And yet it is 
voiced and reiterated in no uncertain tones. At 
first, bubbling over with enthusiasm, his hopes 
and ideas were most optimistic. With ardent 
hopes and youthful desire of idealization, he looked 

<* Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing 
warm, 
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the 
thunder storm," ^ 

and he was eagerly waiting 

^ 1 Locksley Hall, 



ENGLISH WRITERS 149 

«< Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags 
were furled 
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world." i 

So while Locksley Hall is written in a serious 
vein the tone is confidentially optimistic. But 
Locksley Hall is one of his first poems. His life 
and his life's work is before him. The coming 
years would either verify or deny the sentiments 
voiced in his youth. 

And now let us note the results. The years 
have passed. Tennyson is an old man now. But 
as a man above all things desiring to be honest 
with himself and the world, he gives us the 
answer without a falter, and that ansv/er is Locks- 
ley Hall Sixty Years After, Mature in years and 
wisdom, this venerable sage deems it not disgrace- 
ful to admit that the optimistic outcries of his 
youth were wrong : 

" « Forward ! ' rang the voices then, and of the many mine 
was one. 
Let us hush this cry of Forward till ten thousand years 
have gone ! " ^ 

In his youth he had hoped much from evolution. 
But sad experience had taught him the fallacy of 
such a hope. 

1 Locksley Hall, ' Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. 



150 ENGLISH WRITERS 

" Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good 
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud." ' 

With the fondness of nnmatimty he had viewed 
man potentially. He tried to *• dip into the 
future far as human eye could see '' and build up 
a magnificent superstructure of what man might 
do and could do. The future was rosy. But the 
pitiless years taught him to view man as he really 
is. The shallow coating of false eulogism is 
broken and the rotten, corrupt interior of reality is 
laid bare. And Tennyson, reelmg from the sight, 
exclaims : 

" Are we devils, are we men ? 
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here 



'< From the golden alms of blessing, man has coined himself 
a curse, 
Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller, which 
was worse ? " ^ 

•X- -j^ -H- * -x- -^f 

*' When was age so crammed with malice, madness, written, 
spoken lies ? "^ 

And so on throughout Loc'ksley Hall Sixty 
Years Afte)\ every one of the matchless octameters 

1 Locksley Hall Sixty Years A/try. 2 j^i^^ 3 /^^^^ 4 /<^/^. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 151 

records either surprise, dismay or righteous indig- 
nation as the true state of affairs is revealed. 
Even in his masterpiece In Memoriam^ written 
many years before the above, his eyes are begin- 
ning to open, and as he compares the real man 
with the ideal man, he is forced to write : 

<* No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime 
That tear each other in the slime 
Where mellow music matched to him." 

And let it be known that Tennyson's philosophy 
is not to be hurriedly sounded by the novice. He 
was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher, 
for the two go hand in hand. In the Ancient 
Sage he says, 

" Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son, 
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in, 
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, etc.," 

and it indicates the fundamental depths of his 
metaphysics. He even goes so far as to aver that 
when Hallam's body was being brought home in a 
ship, his spirit left his (Tennyson's) body and went 
to meet the ship and returned after an hour's 
absence. (See Li Ilemoriam^ poem XII). 



152 ENGLISH WRITERS 

His poems cover a wide range of topics and 
testify to the greatness of his mind. From the 
legends of King Arthur which he collected and 
arranged in six books,— using as a groundwork 
Malory's Morte d' Arthur^ — to the withering de- 
nunciations of social vices and inequalities in Maud 
and Locksley Hall Sixty Years After ^ he is ever 
the same, — strong, powerful, and true. It is diffi- 
cult to classify his works, and to enumerate them 
would be a huge task. Of the important ones we 
note Idylls of the King {The Arthurian Legends)^ 
Enoch Ardeny In Memoriam, The Princess^ Maud^ 
locksley Hall^ and locksley Hall Sixty Years 
After, There are a great many short poems 
which are very often quoted from, as Ulysses^ The 
lotus EaterSyCrossing the Bar^ Ancient Sage^ etc., 
and also some forgotten dramas which he wrote 
against the advice of his friends. 

The curious thing about Maud was that Tenny- 
son always considered it his best poem and never 
quite forgave the public for the way they received 
it. For as soon as it came out, about ten thousand 
copies were sold on the strength of his reputation, 
but of the second edition, only three hundred copies 
were sold, the public being offended at the demo- 
cratic way he treats the social problems in it. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 153 

In Memoriam^ as we all know, was written by 
the grief -stricken Tennyson to the memory of his 
dear friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died sud- 
denly in Vienna. He was seventeen years writing 
the different poems which compose it, not writing 
them with any fixed plan in view. Later they 
were collected to form one poem, — the third great 
elegy in the English language. 

The remaining vital fact about Tennyson's life is 
his religion. Living in the age when the some- 
what slower progress of religion could not keep 
pace with the tremendous strides of science, 
Tennyson literally went " halting between two 
opinions." And as there was no scene at Carmel 
to decide between Baal or Jehovah, it required a 
lifetime to find the true way. Reared in a Chris- 
tian home, the faith of his fathers was implanted 
too deeply to be eradicated. Yet on the other 
hand his intellect sternly demanded an answer to 
questions which could not, at that time, be an- 
swered. In In Memoriam he tells us : 

** I falter where I firmly trod, 
And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar stairs 
That lead through darkness up to God." 

He tells us further that he is : 



164 ENGLISH WRITEKS 

" An infant crying in the night, 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry." 

And so the tremendous internal struggle goes 
on. The theory that perhaps after all life is a 
treadmill, and the universe one gigantic machine 
that works automatically, attracts him with a 
serpent-like charm. But he knows that the charm 
is fatal. While he is unable to prove it to his 
own satisfaction, he longs to feel deep down in his 
heart : 

" That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
W^hen God hath made the pile complete." * 

But at last he is successful. His old age is 
made serene by the knowledge that the Great 
Pilot is ever at life's helm. 

** Sunset and evening star 
And one clear call for me ! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea. 

* # ^ ^ ^e- 

1 In Memoriam, 



ENGLISH WRITERS 155 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 

I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar." » 



XXXIY. EoBEET Beowning (1812-1889 ). 

Another of the great lights of the Yictorian 
Age, though he spent most of his life in Italy, was 
Eobert Browning, and for that reason we shall 
not be surprised to find many of the titles and 
much of the subject-matter of his poems are of 
Italian significance. 

Browning married Elizabeth Barrett, a poet- 
ess who had already made a name for herself, 
and the union was a most happy one. Mrs. 
Browning continued to write poetry after 
they were married, and as Browning himself 
was a very voluminous writer our literature 
is indebted to the Brownings for much good 
poetry. 

Browning was a very optimistic poet. Opti- 
mism shines throughout all his works. It is per- 
haps best expressed in the oft-quoted and familiar 
song of Fippa, a character in his play Pijypa 
Passes : 

^ Crossing the Bar. 



156 ENGLISH WRITEES 

" The year's at the spring 
The day's at the morn ; 
Morning's at seven ; 
The hillside's dew-pearled ; 
The lark's on the wing ; 
The snail's on the thorn : 
God's in his heaven — 
All's right with the world." 

The same sentiment is voiced in one of his finest 
poems, Saul, The evil spirit has been upon Saul. 
For three days the host, and Abner, the captain, 
have fasted and waited in fear and dread. Then 
the}^ send for young David, fresh fi^om the hills, 
to play on his harp before the king. So David, 
unaccompanied, creeps toward the great black 
tent whence no sound has escaped for three days ; 
no one dared approach. David after a short 
prayer enters and begins to play the tune that 
calls the sheep, and the song sung at harvest time, 
and then a funeral requiem, 

*' Then the chorus intoned 

As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned. 

But I stopped here ; for here in the darkness Saul groaned ! " 

But after pausing, David goes on and sings of 
the gladness of life and the joy of living : 



ENGLISH WRITERS 157 

" Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to rock, 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver 

shock 
Of the plunge in the pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, 
And the sultriness showing the lion is crouched in his lair. 
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust di- 
vine. 
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of 



How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy ! " 

The greater part of Browning's poetry is in 
dramatic form usually with long monologues. 
For Browning is the master of dramatic mono- 
logue. The story is usually very short and of sec- 
ondary importance. It is in the portraiture of 
character that he excels. 

But it is not his spirit of optimism, ever un- 
clouded, nor his portrayal of character, splendid 
as it is, that attracts the attention of the student 
of Browning quite as much as does his style. 
From the standpoint of smoothness of diction, his 
poetry is most unpoetic. He transposes phrases, 
inverts clauses, uses hyphens — in short he so twists 
and distorts our English that his productions can 
only with difficulty be read aloud. This of course 



158 ENGLISH WRITERS 

is not true of all his poetry, but is one of the pre- 
vailing characteristics. 

Without doubt there will always be sharp con- 
tention between lovers of good literature as to 
whether or no Browning excels Tennyson. Nor 
is it the present intention to weary the reader with 
a tedious array of technical differences. The best 
that can be said is, that the reader study both and 
compare for himself. From what has been said 
so far in these brief notes, great differences will 
already be apparent, but the author is inclined to 
believe that these differences also are due to dif- 
ferences in kind of genius and not in degree. 
Some differences are apparent. His cheery opti- 
mism has already been noted ; it is again put forth 
most beautifully in the opening stanza of Eabbi 
Ben Ezra : 

" Grow old along with me ! 
The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made ; 
Our times are in His hand 
V/ho saith, « A whole I planned, 
Youth shows but half; trust God ; see all nor be afraid.* " 

His faith also never wavered : in another stanza of 
the same philosophic poem, he gives utterance to 
one of his most sublime lines : 



ENGLISH WRITERS 159 

" Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure : 
What entered into thee, 
That was, is, and shall be ; 
Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay endure." 

As one reads Browning and becomes imbued with 
his spirit, the roughness of diction — mentioned 
above — fades away and only the sterling worth 
of the thought stands clear. But to get that 
thought one must do much more than read him 
over a few times. For Browning is a master at 
setting forth character. As a subtile analyst he 
stands in much the same relation to the other 
poets as George Eliot does to the other novelists. 
But it is not only present-day characters that he 
describes, but character of a thousand years ago. 
One has only to read and but partially compre- 
hend such poems as My Last Duchess^ A7idrea 
Del Sarto and The Bishop Orders His Toiiib at St. 
Praxed^s Church to realize how fully Browning 
had steeped himself into mediaeval lore. In the 
first poem — My Last Duchess — we have a typical 
example of a mediaeval lord who could not under- 
stand why his wife cared more for pure, unfeigned 
love than for his " nine-hundred-year-old name " 
and all the stilted formalities of court life. In the 
second poem — Andrea Del Sarto — we have the 



160 ENGLISH WRITERS 

case reversed. A great artist that yearns to paint 
only great and noble pictures and to become a 
master like the great Raphael, but who is held 
back by the cold, mercenary greed of his proud 
wife, and meekly submits. In Tlie Bishoj> Orders 
His Tomh we have another wonderful picture of 
a bishop who, with the death-dew on his brow, 
thought more of the villas he was forced to leave 
behind, the " peach-blossom marble " of his sar- 
cophagus, and the rival he hated, than of any or all 
things that pertained to death and the next world. 
This power of laying bare character by means 
of the monologue is best seen in The Ring and the 
Book^ his masterpiece. The story — a count mur- 
dering his wife — is of the simplest, and unless we 
are acquainted with some of Browning's works we 
will be very much at a loss to understand how he 
managed to elaborate so brief and, by comparison, 
so commonplace a story into a masterpiece two 
thousand lines longer than the Iliadj or how he 
eliminates a seeming inevitable monotony by hav- 
ing every one of the characters — the husband, the 
suspected priest, the lawyer, etc.— tell the same 
story. But that is what Browning has done, and 
a tedious explanation will throw little light on the 
subject. One must read him and see for oneself. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 161 

And so we might discuss this wonderful writer 
and his abilities indefinitely, but perhaps enough 
has been said to make the reader wish to know 
him. We content ourselves with but a further 
enumeration of his important works. They are 
Pippa Passes^ Fra Lijppo Lippi^ Abt Voglei\ 
AsolandOj Caliban upon Setehos^ A Blot On the 
Scutcheon^ One Word More^ The Pied Piper of 
Hamelin. 

XXXV. ALGERisroisr C. Swinbuene (1837- 
1909). 
We are here brought face to face with one of 
the strangest characters in the history of English 
literature. Strange not on account of the absence 
of genius, but on account of its erratic manifesta- 
tion. Had he properly restrained and controlled 
the forces that were within him he might to-day 
be viewed as one of the great lights in the firma- 
ment of letters. For Swinburne had genius ; his 
mastery of the English lyric is one of the most 
astonishing things in literature. His lines rise and 
fall in cadences which are unsurpassed and perhaps 
never equalled. He is the equal of Shelley. But 
for all that Swinburne is not, and never will be, a 
great poet. He failed utterly to curb and modify 



162 ENGLISH WRITERS 

that which \Yas welling up in his mind, and w^here 
we might have the grandest masterpieces of 
literatm^e we have only beautiful chaos and 
splendid ruins. 

The student of Swinburne would fain be brief 
in his discussion of the subject-matter of his 
poetry, fearful lest what might be said would 
prove contradictory and obscure — as much of the 
poetry itself is. Strip it of its matchless style, 
and it must be confessed that the poetic mind 
hungering for the kernel of substantial goodness 
finds little else but husks. His poems divide 
themselves, roughly, into four classes. (1) The 
merely sensual. (2) The God-defying. (3) The 
obscure. (4) And — alas, the smallest of all, the 
really beautiful. 

The reader who peruses Swinburne's poems for 
the first time is very likely to be astonished at the 
sensuality and voluptuousness of many. Thoughts 
and ideas of the lowest and most degraded type 
are as serenely discussed as the highest ideals are 
wont to be by other poets. He paints for the 
reader all those pictures that arouse the carnal ap- 
petites and passions. Yet all is couched in classic 
words and in lines of such flawless beauty that 
one is apt to forget the hideousness of the real 



ENGLISH WRITERS 163 

meaning. Xote the opening stanza of Laus 
Veneris : 

<* Asleep or waking is it ? for her neck, 
Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck 
Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out ; 
Soft, and stung softly — fairer for a fleck ! " 

But perhaps more remarkable than this is the 
daring and terrible way in which he hurls defiance 
at the existence and power of the Almighty. 
Swinburne was continually waging a hopeless war 
with the powers that are. The existing order of 
things in the universe annoys and baits him to 
desperation. To judge from his poems he wished 
neither to live nor to die. But being alive he 
must live, and in the end die, and the thought 
goads him to desperation. Had he been placed on 
another planet with other conditions, there is no 
doubt but that his morbid mind would have found 
some cause for dissatisfaction. And so he seeks 
revenge by hurling invective at the omnipotence 
of God. In his Hymn to Proserinne he voices 
his creed in no uncertain tones : 

" All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past 
Ye are gods and behold ye shall die, and the waves be upon you 
at last." 



164 ENGLISH WRITERS 

Xot content with that and similar statements, 
he directly addresses Christ : 

<' Yet Tiiy kingdom shall pass Galilean, Thy dead shall go down 
to the dead 1 " 

And closes what would otherwise have been a 
wonderful poem by saymg : 

'•' So long I endure, no longer ; and laugh not again, neither 
weep. 

For there is no God found stronger than death ; and death is a 
sleep:-' 

In the Garden of Proserjjine he voices the same 
awful doctrine : 

*< That no life lives forever; 

That dead men rise up never ; 
That even the weariest river 

Winds somewhere safe to sea. 
Then star nor sun shall waken 

Nor any change of light : 
Nor sound of waters shaken, 

Nor any sound or sight: 
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, 

Nor days nor nights diurnal : 
Only the sleep eternal 

In an eternal night." 

These lines will sufficiently illustrate the terrible 
channel alona^ which his mind ran. Much of his 



ENGLISH WRITERS 165 

poetry is vague and contradictory. It seems as if 
his mind, striving to outdo itself in painting sen- 
sual pictures or uttering heaven-defying epithets, 
became confused by the very forces that were 
uro:ino: it on. Yet Swinburne's sullen and defiant 
nature seemed to have one weakness and that was 
for chilcben. Only a very few times was he able 
to escape himself, as it were, and then the theme 
is children. At such times he has given us poems 
that are very gems, with nothing to mar or cast a 
shadow. The last stanza in A Child's Laugider is 
significant : 

<< Golden bells of welcome roll'd 
Never forth such tones, nor told 
Hours so blithe in tones so bold, 
As the radiant mouth of gold 
Here that rings forth heaven. 
If the golden-crested wren 
Were a nightingale — why, then 
Something seen or heard of men 
Might be half as sw^eet as when 
Laughs a child of seven." 

Children, The Salt of the Earth, A Child's 
Future. Etude Eealistie are other short poems 
along this line. 

Swinburne has written a o:reat manv other 



166 ENGLISH WRITERS 

poems which space forbids mentioning. With the 
exception of several masques, he wrote only short 
poems. Atlanta in Calydon is considered his best. 
No one can read any of his productions without 
feeling a deep regret that the skill and the genius 
of such a master of verse w^ere not used for the 
w^riting of noble and uplifting poetry instead of 
that which was chaotic, sensual, and blasphemous. 

XXXVI. RuDYAED KiPLma (1865- ). 

Before we consider the last poet of this outline, 
it w^ouid be w^ell to warn the reader again that we 
have been forced to pass by and give but scant 
salutation, as it w^ere, to many of the actors on the 
great drama of literature. There have been many 
reasons for this ; none the least is that the works 
of many of these are, as yet, not mature enough 
to pass judgment upon. However, we cannot pass 
them by altogether. 

Who, for mstance, has not heard of the silver- 
tongued Hein^ey DErMMOis^D (1851-1897) or of the 
theological work of JoHisr Heistey Newmaist (1801- 
1890) ? These writers and divines have given us 
sermons, not musty theology, that mark the best 
of their kind in literature. 

Nor must we omit the women poets. How well 



ENGLISH WRITERS 167 

do we know the poetry of Jean Ingeloav (1820- 
1897), the sweet lyrics of the Caeey sisters (l820- 
24-1871), the modest strength of Adelaide Proc- 
TOK (1825-1864), and the fresh charm of Chris- 
TiNA RossETTi (1828-1882). 

William Morris (1834-1896) and Walter 
Horatio Pater (1838-1894) have yet to with- 
stand the sure test which time alone can impose. 
Meanwhile we turn to one of the most brilliant 
scions of the Empire, — Rudyard Kipling. 

The British Isles are the center of a vast colo- 
nial empire. From them there has gone forth the 
impetus and virility that is gradually transform- 
ing these various diverse provinces into one na- 
tion — England, and these heterogeneous races 
into one race — English. The success of all this is 
due to the fact that the good old English ideals 
and institutions are taking root and growing even 
iu the more distant regions. This being the case 
we shall expect that when the literary genius of 
this, the greatest of races, shall have been trans- 
mitted, along with other ideas, that the returns in 
literary achievement shall not be such as will 
bring discredit to the name and honor of the 
Anglo-Saxon race. 

We believe that Rudyard Kipling fulfils, par- 



168 ENGLISH WRITERS 

tially at least, the above theory. He was born in 
Bombay, India, of English parents. And while 
he received his education in England and com- 
pleted it by traveling, yet we may safely hail his 
as the voice of the colonies. 

As he is not yet deceased, the futm^e holds the 
destiny of Kipling. He has had remarkable suc- 
cess as a writer so far. His works of fiction num- 
ber many volumes. He has also given us several 
volumes of poems. Kipling is, perhaps, unique in 
the fact that he tells us his messages in a jesting 
or semi-jesting mamier. Often this jest turns into 
pathos and the effect is always strong. But while 
he tells us great truths in a light vein, we must 
not confuse him with the satuists. The age of 
satire is past. He never palms off as genuine 
either burlesque or cheap wit, but with rare talent 
tells his tale in his own unique way. In an intro- 
ductory poem he outlines his plan : 

" I have written the tale of our life 
For a sheltered people's mirth, 
In jesting guise — but ye are wise, 

And ye know what the jest is worth." 

We know it to be a fact that the environment of 
a poet furnishes his subject-matter. Kipling was 



ENGLISH WRITERS 169 

no exception to this law. But the surroundings 
to which he fell heir were somewhat different 
from the ordinary. He was familiar ^vith the 
life in the camps and barracks of the average 
British soldier, and this gave him material for 
much of his poetry. He gives us phases of 
soldier life which we have heretofore either been 
ignorant of or have ignored, and always from 
the standpoint of the common soldier. His 
sketches of soldiers, officers, secretaries, rajahs 
and pariahs have a realism about them that is 
often startling and always interesting. In short 
his poems have a freshness about them that 
conventional England itself could hardly have 
supplied. 

In addition to his prose works, Kipling wrote 
only short poems, and of these there are several 
editions now extant. Ballads of the East and 
West and Barrack-room Ballads are the names of 
two volumes. Of his short poems two deserve 
special mention. The White Man's Burden and 
The Recessional. The Recessional is undoubtedly 
the finest poem he ever wrote, and it is not too 
much to say that no better poem has been AATitten 
in the last decade. We submit the first and last 
stanzas : 



170 ENGLISH WRITERS 

« God of our fathers, known of old — 
Lord of our far-flung battle line — 
Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
Domniion over palm and pine — 
Lord God of Hosts, be wdth us yet, 
Lest we forget— lest we forget ! " 
•K- -x- ^ -x- * 

*< For heathen heart that puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard — 
All valiant dust that builds on dust, 
And guarding calls not Thee to guard. 
For frantic boast and foolish word 
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord ! 
Amen." 

It is still far too early to predict what Kipling's 
future will be. Yet if past standards and prec- 
edented careers may be considered, it is not too 
much to say that England, sitting on her island 
throne, can look to her distant possessions and see 
there one of foreio^n birth but of her own flesh 
and blood who will uphold the literary record of 
the Saxons. 



CHAPTEE Till 
ENGLISH XOVELISTS 

{From Smollett to Stevenson) 

Ijs" Section XIII Aye discussed at some length 
the rise of the novel. Its formation and the cir- 
cumstances that helped to shape it were fully 
noted. And having launched it upon its career 
by Eichardson and Fielding we temporarily ended 
the discussion. Taking up the thread of discussion 
here, we find that the next links in the chain were 
Roderick Random by Tobias Sjviollett (1721- 
1771) and Tristram Shandy by Laweexce 
Steele (1713-1768). Goldsmith's The Vicar 
of Wa.lcefield also should not be overlooked in this 
connection. Each of these men, — from the time 
of DeFoe until now, — had added something to its 
development that was original and yet necessary. 
It is with a discussion of 

Jane Austen (1775-1817) 

that we begin to trace the history of those who 

are called novelists in the strict sense of the term, 

171 



172 ENGLISH WRITERS 

This young author is always given a place in 
literature and justly, for in her chosen field she is 
quite supreme. Her ability to portray domestic 
life and to do so with fine expression and charm 
has never been surpassed. She writes not of 
foreign adventures nor of the life of the upper ten, 
but of the life of those she mingled with and 
knew, — the great middle class. Her important 
works are Pride and Prejudice^ Sense and Sensi- 
hility^ and Northanger Abhey. 

Edwaed Bulwee Lyttois- (1803-1873) 
This was a most versatile writer and his works 
are legion in number. Among these we note The 
Pilgrims of the Rhine^ The Haunted and the 
Hunters^ Pelham^ Eugene Arara^ etc. But of 
these, his greatest— certainly his most popular — 
work was The Last Pays of Porajyeii. Here, in a 
way that leaves nothing to be desired, he tells us 
of the lives, customs, and habits of the Romans at 
the time of that terrible catastrophe. With him 
we traverse again the streets of old Pompeii and 
bathe in one of the magnificent therms ; we jostle 
along in the crowd that throngs the streets on the 
way to the amphitheater and watch the combats 
of the gladiators. Then comes the black cloud 



ENGLISH WRITERS 173 

from Vesuvius and the rain of hot cinders. He 
pictures these scenes and at the same time keeps 
in touch with his story in such a way that neithei^ 
suffers. Altogether we must pronounce The Last 
Days of Pomjpeii a great work. 

Chaeles DiCKEisrs (1812-1870) 
is undoubtedly one of the greatest names in liter- 
ature. Add Thackeray and Eliot and you form a 
triad than which there is none greater. Dickens 
was both a novelist and a humorist ; he was the 
Mark Twain of Engla.nd. But at the same time 
he scaled heights not accessible to the latter. He 
was a great man ; he produced great works ; and 
these works accomplished great results. 

He was born of poor parents, and knew the 
bitter sting of poverty. But after incredible 
struggling he attained the summit never to be 
shaken, and he greets the world with a message at 
once cheerful and inspiring. 

Some one has said that he was incapable of 
delineating a normal, well-balanced person, and 
that we knew his characters only by their eccen- 
tricities. But that criticism is manifestly unfair, 
for one has only to recollect how he knows his 
own friends and its unfairness will be apparent. 



174 ENGLISH WRITERS 

But in spite of criticism, favorable or adverse, it 
cannot be doubted that Dickens did some things 
that are criteria of great genius. First, he gave 
us an insight into London's great underworld, and 
that with all the skill of a sleuth. Second, he did 
much to scatter world-wide the idea of Christmas 
cheer and all the thoughts and customs of that 
occasion which we so highly prize. Third, he 
drew attention to great abuses, e. ^., the fagging 
system in the secondary schools, and in short 
showed us that children have hearts, tender and 
shrinking, that are too often trampled upon and 
ignored. Again, his characters are as common to 
us as our own friends and to be ignorant of Dickens 
is to be ignorant of those countless allusions and 
quotations that have imbedded themselves in our 
expressions. 

His masterpiece is David Copjper fields Avhich is 
supposed to be largely autobiographical. Of his 
other works anything but a rough classification is 
impossible. His distinctly humorous work is the 
Pickwick Papers. But humor Pcnd pathos are 
general characteristics of all his works. The 
Cricket on the Hearth, The Chimes^ Christmas 
Carols belong to his Christmas stories. For abuses 
in schools read Nicholas Nickleby ; for a view of 



ENGLISH WRITERS 175 

the underworld, Oliver Tvnst ; for the greatest 
amount of pathos. Little Dorrit^ and Old Curiosity 
Shoj>, Other works are Bleak House ^ Domheij 
and Son^ and A Tale of Two Cities. 

William Makepeace Thackeray 
(1811-1863) 
is the great contemporary of Dickens and, from 
the standpoint of sketching men and women, per- 
haps excels him. Though rivals, these two were 
the best of friends. 

Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, and 
was sent to England to complete his studies. 
After traveling and losing his money he returned 
to England and began to write for a living. He 
was a cartoonist as well as a novelist and some- 
times illustrated his own books. 

He was one of the great realists of this age ; he be- 
lieved in depicting things exactly as they were and 
not as they should be. He was also a satirist and, 
incidentally, a moralist. He vras also something of 
an essayist and could imitate perfectly the polished 
style of Addison. English Humorists and The 
Four Georges are essays. His novels are interest- 
ing and brilliant, and while he has not attained the 
popularity of Dickens it is because the}" diifer in 



176 ENGLISH ^nVRITERS 

degrees of style and not in genius. Yo.nity Fair, 
Henry Es::''r:/i'L Pc/idzu/iis, T'i- Y'.rgiutans, and 
The Xtireun-L-^is are his important works. 

Charlotte Beoxte (1S16-1S55) 
vrliile not ranking as one of the great noveKsts is 
nevertheless deserving of mention. The sadness 

of her own Life found its way into her works and 
gave them a melancholy ca^st. beautiful in its sad- 
ness. She. too. was a realist and her life was one 
of real sorrow, so she — in company with her sister 
— turned to the dream world of Literature for re- 
lief. J'j.ne Eyr,. Shirley, and ViUtAe are her 
important works. 

Her sister. Emily Bronte dSlS-lSttS'. was 
aMost as gifted as Charlotte. Her ckief work, 
Wuthering HeiohU, elicited the enthusiastic ap- 
proval of ]\.IaLthew Arnold, who compared her 
power of portraying pa-ssion to Byron. 

To this period belong Chaelzs KiyCxSLEY 
( 1S19-1S75 I famous for his TT^sf^rard Ee^, Eyj'a^^a, 

etc.. WlLLIAX TTlLKIE COLLIXS 1 1S24-1 SSc^ ', 

author of The^ennan in WJuA,, ArrradaU, The 
Moomtone. etc.. PiICHaed Blackaioee \\^\Lh- 
1900). whose one good novel. Ermei De»:'ne. made 
him famous: and manv other less famous writers. 



ENGLISH WRITERS 177 

George Eliot (1S19-1S80) 
knovru to her friends as Marion Evans, is consid- 
ered by some as the greatest writer of fiction that 
the English race has yet produced. Certain it is 
that her novels shoTv a keen psychological insight, 
a discernment and delineation of character that 
mark her as talented beyond the ordinary. 
Dickens pictured city life for us, Thackeray, 
society life, but George Eliot gave us country 
life. 

Like all great novelists she strives to amuse, 
to instruct, and to preach. As she grows older 
the first purpose of the three tends to disappear 
in the psychological knots which she strives to 
untangle and the moral lessons she attempts to 
teach. 

Her hfe, especially the part of it that ignored 
marriage conventions, has been the subject of much 
controversy. She began her literary work by con- 
tributing to the West?7i{nster Bevieio and after- 
ward became assistant editor of it. She spent 
much time translating works of a scientific and 
philosophic nature and through these, doubtless, 
she was led astray rehgiously. While there are 
many conflicting versions about her infidelity, one 
thing is certain, she subscribed to no existing 



178 ENGLISH WRITERS 

Christian creed. Her important works are Adam 
Bede^ The Mill on the Floss^ Silas Marner^ 
Romola^ Daniel Deronda^ and Middlemarch, 

In addition to her great work as a novelist and 
her lesser work as a translator, she was an essay- 
ist of some note and even aspired to poetry. 
These latter endeavors were, however, but subsidi- 
ary outlets to the dynamic power of her great 
mind. 

Geoege Meeedith (1828-1909) 
His place in literature is secure but, like other 
great writers, the public was long in recognizing 
him. However, he still seems too much like a 
modern writer to consider him in a matter-of-fact 
way in history. His principal works are. The 
Egoist^ The Ordeal of Richard Feverel^ Diana 
of the Grossways^ Beauchamp^s Career^ and The 
Adventures of Henry Richmond. 

RoBEET Louis Steveistson (1850-1894) 
Though also a modern writer, his place in liter- 
ature is undoubtedly a high one. No one can 
read Stevenson without being impressed that here 
was an artist at work. In fact aspiring authors 
may unhesitatingly take him as a model, secure 



ENGLISH WRITERS 179 

that he is right. His stories have all the absorb- 
ing interest of Scott's works, with an added asset 
that they are written in and for this age. 

Never strong physically, Stevenson's optimism 
that never wavered and the immense amount of 
work he performed are objects of awe and wonder. 
Nor are his works narrow. For a good story of 
pirates, there is none better than Treasure Island. 
From that he can swing to the opposite pole and 
discuss, in an equally interesting manner, the psy- 
chological problem of a dual personality, in Dr, 
Jehyll and Mr, Hyde, And so on till we are 
overwhelmed with the prodigious strength and 
scope of his genius. 

Among his other works may be noted Kid- 
napped^ David Balfour^ The Master of Ballan- 
trae^ Aes Triplex^ Travels icith a Donkey^ etc., and 
the unfinished romances of St. Ives^ and Weir of 
Hermiston. 

XXXYII. Conclusion. 

We have attempted in a few brief sketches to 
trace the progress of the greatest literature in the 
world from Saxon savagery and barbarism to 
English civilization and ultra-civilization — a span 
of almost fourteen centuries. During that time. 



180 ENGLISH WRITERS 

from the very nature of the case, changes of an 
epoch-making cha^racter have taken place in every 
part of the mighty superstructm'e of Anglo-Saxon 
greatness. Of these many, one, concernmg the 



manner of composition, particularly concerns us. 

In the olden days the Saxon scop, sitting in 
a rude hut, with few of the comforts and none of 
the luxuries of life about him, wrought in poet- 
ical form the great thoughts in his mind because 
it was difficult for him to remain silent. To-day 
the author, as a rule, sits in a sumptuous study, 
with all the comforts and luxuries that fourteen 
centuries of progress can produce about him, and 
writes, not because an overcharged mind bids him 
and gives him no rest till he does, but because 
some editor has offered or will offer him so much 
for his efforts. In short the forces that give birth 
to works of literature have, in a large measure, 
changed from the emotional to the mercenary. 

It is indeed with a feeling of sadness that vre 
view the fact — now no longer to be disputed — 
that the sparkling, rushing stream of Anglo-Saxon 
energy is fast losing itself in the sandy deltas of 
sordid greed and selfish aggrandizement. And 
how much sadder must it be that a vocation as 
noble as that of writing is fast following in the 



ENGLISH WRITERS 181 

same course ! No wonder that the greatest poet 
of the Yictorian Age cries out : 

" From the golden alms of blessing man has coined himself a 
curse." ^ 

It is left to the reader's imagination to predict 
the future of literatm^e composed under modern 
conditions as contrasted with that produced under 
ancient conditions. 

As to the theory — advanced by some— that lit- 
erature is about exhausted, that the avenues along 
which it was wont to travel are being rendered 
impassible by competition and repetition, — we can 
only say that it is not for us to decide, and that it 
is left as a problem for literary critics to discuss. 
Literature is and always has been a faithful record 
of the lives of its people. It is this life that pro- 
duces it and is the important part. And while 
we have some magnificent pieces of poetry and 
prose, we must never forget that 

" Never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the 
meter." =^ 

That we live more rapidly, that our lives are 
more crowded with hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows 

^ Locks ley Hall Sixty Years After. 
* Indirection^ by R. Realf. 



182 ENGLISH WRITERS 

than the lives of our forefathers, no one can dis- 
pute ; and on this ground, at least, the above 
theory must be rejected. The slow, deliberate, 
thoughtful lives of our ancestors produced a 
never-dying literature. Shall the crowded, bus- 
tling, pell-mell life of the twentieth century equal 
or surpass it ? For our life has become so great, 
so awe-inspiring, so terrible that it can produce a 
mighty unwritten literature. To the listening, 
philosophic ear the intonations of this vast ora- 
torio can plainly be heard. The voices of exulta- 
tion and anguish, of greed, of despau^, of lust, of 
avarice, fuse and mingle to form a melody that is 
new and weird. It is the heart-cry of humanity. 
ISTot humanity, savage, and roaming the primeval 
forest ; not humanity living slowly, and peacefully 
enjoying the fruits of its labor ; but humanity 
crowded, driven, and rendered unnatural by those 
forces to which some have given the name of civi- 
lization. Its literature will be an epic-song writ- 
ten with drops of blood upon the quivering heart- 
flesh. 

** The voices of immigrants bringing their longings and hopes and 
their dreams, 
The voices of youth that are seeking the city that beckons and 
gleams, 



ENGLISH WRITERS 183 

The voices of lust and of power, the voices of sin and of shame, 
The cUnking of gold and the rattle of dice, the sound of the 

trumpets of fame, 
The whispers of lovers, the chanting of priests, and itinerant 

rumble of wheels, 
The shouting of newsboys and fakers, the clack of innumerable 

heels. 
The tinkle of glass and of silver, in places of revel and waste, 
The whine of the unlovely beggar, the laugh of the woman un- 
chaste. 
The throb of emotionless engines, the whistle of ships coming in, 
The blare of a band and the cheer of a crowd, the steam-ham. 
mer's insolent din ; 

•K- 4f ^ -x- ^ -:;• 

A lite of the winners who triumph, a dirge for the lost in the fight 
A song for the sad and the bad and the glad, and the many who 

bless and who blight, 
A song that is ever unfinished, since no man may sing it aright." ^ 

1 The Song of the City by Breton Braely. 



THE END 



Index 



(The following is a list of all the works found in the book, with 
a few additions. This list has been carefully selected and is be- 
lieved to comprise the most important and well-known works in 
English Literature.) 



Subject 

Absalom and Achitophel 

Abt Vogler 

Aeon and Rodophe 

Adam Bede 

Adonais 

Adventures of Henry Richmond, The , 

Aes Triplex 

Alastor 

Alchemist, The 

Alexander's Feast 

All for Love 

All's Well that Ends Well 

Amoretti , . . . , 

Ancient Sage 

Andrea Del Sarto 

Annus ]vlirabilis 

Antony and Cleopatra 

Anlony and Cleopatra 

Apologie for Poetrie 

Arcadia 

Armadale 

Arthurian Legends (see Idylls of the King) 

Asolando 

Astrophel and Stella 

As You Like It . 

184 



Author 
Dryden . . 
Browning 
Landor 
Eliot . . 
Shelley . 
Meredith , 
Stevenson 
Shelley , 
Jonson . . 
Dryden . 
Dryden 
Shakespeare 
Spenser . 
Tennyson 
Browning 
Dryden . 
Dryden 
Shakespeare 
Sidney . 
Sidney . 
(Wilkie) Collins 

Browning . . 
Sidney .... 
Shakespeare 



Page 

63 
161 
107 
177 
120 
178 

179 
119 

50 
64 
64 

46 
35 

159 
64 
64 
45 
35 
35 

176 

161 
36 
45 



INDEX 



185 



Atlanta in Calydon Swinburne .... i66 

Auld Lang Syne Burns 92 



Balder Dead 

Ballads of the East and West 

Banks O'Doon, The 

Bannockburn, Or, '* Scots wha hae wi' 

Wallace bled " 

Barrack-room Ballads 

Battle of Books, The 

Beauchamp's Career 

Beowulf 

Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's 

Church, The 

Bleak House 

Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A 

Bride of Abydos, The 



Arnold . 
Kipling 
Burns . 



Burns . . . 
Kipling . . 
Swift . . . 
Meredith . . 
(Unknown) 



Browning 
Dickens . 
Browning 
Byron . . 



H5 

169 

92 

92 

169 

72 

178 

19 

175 
161 

1^5 



Cain Byron . . 

Caliban Upon Setebos Browning 

Canterbury Tales Chaucer . 

Castaway, The Cowper . 

Childe Harolde Byron . . 

Children Swinburne 

Child's Future, A Swinburne 

Child's Laughter, A Swinburne 

Chimes, The Dickens . 

Christabel Coleridge 

Christmas Carol Dickens . 

Clarissa Harlowe Richardson 

Comedy of Errors, A Shakespeare 

Comus Milton . . 

Confessions of an Opium Eater .... DeQuincey 

Coriolanus . Shakespeare 

Cotter's Saturday Night, The Burns 

Count Robert of Paris Scott 

Cricket on the Hearth, The Dickens . 

Crossing the Bar Tennvson 

Crown of Wild Olive, The Ruskin 



1x6 

161 

26 

84 
112 
165 
165 
165 
174 
100 

174 

70 

45 
52 

no 
46 
90 

105 

174 
152 
140 



186 



INDEX 



Cymbeline , Shakespeare 

Cynthia's Revels Jonson . . . 



Daniel Deronda Eliot . . 

David Balfour Stevenson 

David Copperfield Dickens . 

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Gibbon 
Defensio pro Populo Anglicano . . , Milton . . 

Deserted Village, The Goldsmith 

Dethe of Blaunche the Dutchesse . . . Chaucer 

Diana of the Crossways Meredith . 

Diverting History of John Gilpin, The . Cowper 

Dombey and Son Dickens . 

Don Juan Byron . . 

Dover Beach Arnold , . 

Dream-Fugue DeQuincey 

Dr. Faustus Marlowe . 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Stevenson 

Dunciad Pope , . . 



Ecclesiastical History Bede 

Edward II Marlowe 

Egoist, The Meredith 

Elegy in a Country Churchyard .... Grey 

Endymion Keats . 

England Cowper 

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers . Byron . 

English Humorists Thackeray 

Enoch Arden Tennyson 

Epipsychidion Shelley 

Epistle to Augusta Byron , 

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot ....... Pope 

Epithalamion Spenser 

Essay on Criticism Pope 

Essay on Human Understanding . . . Locke 

Essay on Man Pope 

Essays, " Clive," " Hastings," etc. . . . Macaulay 

Essays of Elia Lamb . . 

Etude Realistic Swinburne 

Eugene Aram Bulwer-Lytton 



46 
50 

178 
179 

174 
106 

55 
82 

17s- 
86 
175 
115 
144 
III 

39 

179 

66 



39 

178 

78 
125 



175 

152 

119 

114 

66 

35 

65 

61 

66 

136 

108 

165 

172 



INDEX 



187 



Eve of St. Agnes, The Keats 125 

Every Man in His Humor Jonson 50 

Excursion, The Wordsworth ... 96 



Faerie Queene Spenser . 

Fare Thee Well Byron . . 

Fingal Macpherson 

Flight of a Tartar Tribe, The DeQuincey 

Flow Gently, Sweet Afton Burns . . 

Forsaken Merman, The Arnold . . 

Fors Clavigera Ruskin 

Four Georges, The , . Thackeray 

Fra Lippo Lippi Browning 



35 
114 

79 
III 

92 

H5 
140 

'75 
161 



Gammer Gurton's Needle (Wm.) Stevenson (?) 

Garden of Proserpine Swinburne 

Gebir Landor 

Giaour Byron . . 

Goboduc Sackville . 

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners . Bunyan . 
Grand Duke of Florence, The .... Massinger 

Gulliver's Travels Swift . . 

Guy Mannering Scott . . 



Hamadryad, The Landor . . 

Hamlet Shakespeare 

Haunted and the Hunters, The .... Bulwer-Lytton 

Hebrew Melodies Byron . . . 

Hellenics Landor . . 

Henry IV, V, VI Shakespeare 

Henry VIII Shakespeare 

Henry Esmond Thackeray 

Heroes and Hero-worship Carlyle 

Highland Mary Burns . . 

Hind and the Panther, The . . . . Dryden 
History of England from the Fall of 
Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish 

Armada Froude . . , 

History of Frederick the Great . 



49 
164 
107 

1^5 

49 
59 
50 
72 
10? 



107 

43 
172 

116 

107 

45 
46 
176 

135 
92 

64 



142 



Carlyle 134 



188 INDEX 

History of the English People from the 

xVccession of James II Macaulay 136 

History of the French Revolution . . . Carlyle 134 

Holy War, The Bunyan 59 

House of Fame Chaucer 

Hudibras ,..,,. Butler 61 

Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Na- 
tivity .... . ]Milton 55 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Shelley ..... iiS 

Hymn to Proserpine Swinburne .... 163 

Hypatia . Kingsley 176 

Hyperion , Keats 126 

Idylls of the King Tennyson .... 152 

Iliad (Translation of) Pope 66 

II Penseroso Milton 52 

Imaginary Conversations Landor 107 

In Memoriam Tennyson .... 146 

Intimations of Immortality, Ode on the . Wordsworth ... 97 

Ivanhoe Scott ....... 105 

Jane Eyre Bronte 176 

Jew of Malta, The Marlowe 39 

John Anderson My Jo, John Burns 92 

Joseph Andrews Fielding 70 

Journal to Stella Swift 72 

JuUus Ci^sar Shakespeare ... 45 

Kidnapped Stevenson .... 179 

King John Shakespeare ... 46 

King Lear Shakespeare ... 43 

Knight of the Burning Pestle .... Beaumont & Fletcher 

Kubla Khan Coleridge .... loo 

Lady of the Lake, The ...... Scott 104 

L' Allegro Milton 52 

Laodamia Wordsworth . . 97 

Last Days of Ponipeii, The Bulwer-Lytton . . 172 

Laus Veneris Swinburne . . , . 163 

Lays of Ancient Rome Macaulay .... 136 



INDEX 



189 



Lay of the Last Minstrel, The ..... Scott , . 104 

Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow . DeQuincey .... 1 1 1 

Life and Death of Mr. Badman, The . . Bunyan 59 

Life of Johnson Boswell 74 

Life of Schiller Carlyle 135 

Little Dorrit Dickens 175 

Lives of the Poets .Johnson 76 

Locksley Hall Tennyson .... 148 

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After . . . Tennyson .... 149 

London Johnson 75 

Lorna Doone Blackmore .... 176 

Lotus Eaters, The Tennyson .... 152 

Love's Labor Lost Shakespeare ... 46 

Lycidas Milton 52 

Macbeth Shakespeare ... 43 

Mac Flecknoe Dryden 63 

Maid of Honor, The Massinger .... 50 

Manfred Byron 114 

Man's a Man for a' That, A Burns 92 

T^Ian was Made to Mourn Burns 92 

Marmion Scott 104 

Master of Ballantrae, The Stevenson .... 179 

Maud Tennyson .... 152 

Mazeppa Byron 115 

Measure for Measure Shakespeare ... 46 

Merchant of Venice Shakespeare ... 45 

Merry Wives of Windsor, The .... Shakespeare ... 45 

Michael Wordsworth ... 97 

Middlemarch Eliot 178 

Midsummer Night's Dream, A . . , . Shakespeare ... 45 

Mill on the Floss, The Eliot 178 

Modern Painters Ruskin 140 

Modest Proposal, A Swift 

INIoonstone, The (W'ilkie) Collins . 176 

Morte d'Arthur Malory ..... 28 

Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare ... 45 

Murder Considered as one of the Fine 

Arts DeQuincey .... ill 

My Last Duchess Browning .... 159 



190 



IXDEX 



Necessity for Atheism, The .... Shelley . 

Newcomes, The Thackeray 

New Way to Pay Old Debts, A . . . . ^Massinger 

Nicholas Nickleby Dickens . 

Nightingale and the Glowworm, The . Cowper . 

Northanger Abbey Austen 

Novum Organum Bacon 

Obermann Once More Arnold 

Ode on a Grecian Urn , Keats 

Ode on Indolence Keats 

Ode on Melancholy Keats 

Ode to a Nightingale Keats 

Ode to Evening Collins 

Ode to Psyche Keats 

Odyssey (Translation of) Pope 

Old Curiosity Shop Dickens . 

Old Mortality Scott . . 

Oliver Twist Dickens . 

One Word More Browning 

On Fame Keats . . 

On His Blindness , . . . Milton . . 

On the Receipt of My ]vIother's Picture . Cowper . 
Ordeal of Pvichard Feverel, The .... ^Meredith . 

Othello Shakespeare 

O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast .... Burns . . 



Pamela . . Richardson 

Paradise Lost Milton . . 

Paradise Regained Milton . . 

Parlement of Foules Chaucer 

Pelham Bulwer-Lytton 

Pendennis Thackeray , 

Pericles Shakespeare 

Pericles and Aspasia Landor . . 

Peter Bell Wordsworth 

Pickwick Papers Dickens . . 

Pied Piper of Hamlin, The ...... Browning 

Piers Plowman Langland 

Pilgrim's Progress Bunyan . . 



INDEX 



191 



Pilgrims of the Rhine, The Bulwer-Lytton 

Pippa Passes Browning 

Poems of Ossian Macpherson 

Poems Set to Music Byron . 

Pot of Basil, The Keats . 

Pride and Prejudice Austen . 

Princess, The Tennyson 

Prisoner of Chillon, The Byron . 

Progress of Poesy, The Grey 

Prometheus Unbound Shelley 

Queen Mab Shelley . . 

Quern Quaeritis (Unknown) 



Rabbi Ben Ezra Browning 

Ralph Royster Doyster Udall . 

Rape of the Lock Pope 

Rasselas Johnson 

Recessional Kipling 

Redgauntlet Scott 

Revolt of Islam, The Shelley 

Richard II, III Shakespeare 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner Coleridge 

Ring and the Book, The Browning 

Robinson Crusoe DeFoe . . 

Rob Roy Scott . . 

Roderick Random Smollett . 

Romeo and Juliet , . . Shakespeare 

Romola Eliot . . 



Salt of the Earth Swinburne 

Samson Agonistes Milton 

Sartor Resartus , . . . . Carlyle 

Saul Browning 

Seasons, The Thomson 

Sense and Sensibility Austen . 

Sensitive Plant, The Shelley 

Sesame and Lilies Ruskin 

Seven Lamps of Architecture, The . . Ruskin 
Shades of Agamemnon Landor 



192 INDEX 

Shepherde's Calendar, The Spenser 35 

Shirley Bronte 1 76 

Short Histoiy of the English People . . Green ...... 141 

Silas r^Iarner . Eliot 178 

Silent \Yoman, The Jonson 50 

Sir Roger de Coverley Papers .... Addison 68 

Sohrab and Rustum Arnold 145 

Song for St. Cecilia's Day, A Dryden 64 

Spanish Tragedy, The Kidd 49 

Spectator, The (Newspaper) Addison & Steele . 68 

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse , . Arnold 144 

Stanzas to the ^Memory of Obermann . Arnold 145 

St. Ives (Unfinished) Stevenson .... 179 

Stones of Venice, The Ruskin 140 

Summer Xight, A Arnold 145 

Suspiria de Profundus DeQuincey .... iii 

Tale of a Tub, The Swift 72 

Tale of Two Cities, A Dickens 175 

Tales from Shakespeare Lamb 108 

Talisman, The Scott 105 

Tamburlaine Marlowe 39 

Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare ... 46 

Tam O'Shanter's Ride Burns 92 

Task, The , Covrper 86 

Tatler, The (Newspaper) Steele 67 

Temora Macpherson ... 79 

Tempest, The Shakespeare ... 45 

Thrasymedes and Eunoe Landor 107 

Thyrsis Arnold 145 

Timon of Athens Shakespeare ... 46 

Tintern Abbey, Lines Composed Near . Wordsworth ... 94 

Titus Andronicus Shakespeare ... 46 

To a Cloud Shelley 121 

To a Louse Burns 92 

To a Mouse ' Burns 92 

To a "Mountain Daisy Burns S9 

To a Skylark Shelley 121 

To Mary in Heaven Burns 92 

To Night Shelley ..... 121 



INDEX 



193 



To the West Wind Shelley . . 

Tom Jones Fielding . . 

Travels of Sir John Mandeville .... Mandeville (?) 

Travels with a Donkey Stevenson 

Treasure Island Stevenson . 

Tristram and Iseult Arnold . , . 

Tristram Shandy Sterne . . . 

Troilus and Cressida , Shakespeare 

Twelfth Night ,...., Shakespeare 

Two Gentlemen of Verona Shakespeare 

Ulysses Tennyson . 

Unto This Last Ruskin . . 

Utopia (Sir Thomas) More 



Vanity Fair Thackeray 

Vanity of Human Wishes, The .... Johnson . 

Vicar of Wakefield, The Goldsmith 

Villette Bronte . . 

Virgin Martyr, The Massinger 

Virginians, The . Thackeray 

Vision of Judgment, The Byron . . 

Volpone Jonson . . 

Weir of Hermiston (Unfinished) . . Stevenson 

Westward Ho Kingsley . 

White Man's Burden, The Kipling . 

Winter Evening, The Cowper . 

Winter's Tale, A Shakespear 

Woman in White, The (Wilkie) Collins 

Wuthering Heights (Emily) Bronte 

Yardley Oak Cowper . . . 



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Beecher. ^ What he had to say on this subjed was bom 
of experience J and his own inimitable style was at once both 
statement and illu^ration of his theme. ^ This volume is a 
unique and ma^erly treatise on the fundamerial principles of 
ftrue oratory. 

CONVERSATION Some people are accused of talking 
By J. P. Mahaffy too much. But no one is ever 

taken to task for talking too well. 
^ Of all the accomplishments of modern society, that of 
being an agreeable conversationali^ holds fir^ place. 
Nothing is more delightful or valuable. ^ To sugge^ what 
to say, ju^ how and when to say it, is the general aim of 
this work, and it succeeds mo^ admirably in its purpose. 

READING The ability to read aloud well, 

AS A FINE AI^T whether at the fireside or on the 
By Ernest Legouve public platform, is a fine art. 

^ The directions and sugge^ions 
contained in this work of ^andard authority v/ill go far 
toward the attainment of this charming accomplishment. 
^ The work is especially recommended to teacheis and 
others i^itere^ed in the in^rudtion of public school pupils. 

7 



SOCIALISM Socialism is ''In the air/' Ci References 

By Charles H. Olia to the subjed are corJlantly appeariog 
in newspapers, magazines, and othei 
pubKcations. ^ But fe^v persons except the socialists them- 
selves have more than a dim comprehension of what it really 
means. ^ This book gives in a clear and interesnng manner 
a complete idea of the economic doctrines taught by the best , 
lociali^s. 

JOURNALISM What is news, how Is it obtained, how 
By Charles H. OHn handled, and how can one become a 
Joumalist? €| These questions are all 
answered in this book, and detailed instructions are given for 
obtaining a position and \NTiting up all kinds of " assign- 
ments.'* ^ It shows what to avoid and what to cultivate, 
and contains chapters on book re\'iewing, dramatic criticism 
and proofreading. 

VENTRlLOQUiSM Although always a delightW form 
By Charles H. Oilr. of entertainment, \''entriloquism is 

to most of us more or less of a 
my^ery ^ It need be so no longer. ^ This book exposes 
the secrets of the art completely, and sho^vs ho^v almost 
anyone may leam to " throw the voice '* both near and far. 
^ Direcftions for the con^ucftion of automatons are given 
as vv^ell as good dialogue for their successful operation. 
^ Fully illu^rated. 



CONUNDI^UMS Conundrums sharpen our wits and 
By Dean Rivers lead us to think quickly. ^ They are 

also a source of infinite amusement 
and pleasure, whiling away tedious hours and putting eve:y- 
one in good humor. ^ This book contains an excellent col- 
ledlion of over a thousand of the late^, brighter, and mo^ 
up-to-date conundrums, to which are added many Biblical, 
poetical, and French conundrums. 

MAGIC There is no more delightful form of enter- 

By Ellis Stanyon tainment than that afforded by the per- 
formances of a magician. ^ My^erious as 
these performances appear, they may be very readily learned 
if carefully explained. ^ This book embraces full and 
detailed descriptions of all the well knownn tricks with coins, 
handkerchiefs, hats, flowers, and cards, together with a 
number of novelties not previously produced or explained- 
^ Fully illustrated. 

HYPNOTISM There is no more popular or 

By Edward H. Eldridge, A. M. intere^g form of entertain- 
ment than hypnotic exhibitions, 
and everyone would like to know how to hypnotize. ^ By 
following the simple and concise in^rudions contciined in this 
r omplete manual anyone may, with a little pracflice, readily 
learn how to exercise this unique and ^ange power. 



WHiST "According to Cavendish*' is now 

By Cavendish almost as familiar an expression as 

Twenty.third Edition '' according to Hoyle." ^ No whist 
player, whether a novice or an expert, 
can afford to be without the aid and support of Cavendish. 
No household in which the game is played is complete 
without a copy of this book. ^ This edition contains all of 
the matter found in the English publication and at one-fourth 
the co^. 



PARLOR GAMES "What shaU we do to amuse our- 
By Helen E. Hollister selves and our friends?'* is a ques- 

tion frequently propounded on rainy 
days and long winter evenings. ^ This volume mo^ happily 
answers this question, as it contains a splendid coUedion of 
all kinds of games for amusement, entertainment, and inimic- 
tion. ^ The games are adapted to both old and young, and 
all classes will find them both profitable and interesling. 



ASTRONOMY : Can you tell what causes 

The Sun and His Family day and night, seasons 

By Julia MacNair Wright and years, tides and 

eclipses ? Why is the 
sky blue and Mars red ? What are meteors and shooting 
^ars ? ^ These and a thousand other que^cns are answered 
in a mo^ fascinating way in this highly intere^ng volunio. 
Few books contain as much valuable material so pleasaiwly 
packed in so small a space. ^ Illu^rated. 

BO 



BOTANY : TKe scientific study ol 

The Story of Plant Life Botany made as intereb^ 

By Julia MacNair Wright '^^^ as a fairy tale. § It is 

better reading than such 
tales, because of the profit. ^ Each chapter is devoted to 
the month of the year in which plants of that month are iir 
evidence. Not only is the subjed: treated with accuracy, 
but there is given much praclical information as (o the care 
and treatment of plants and flowers. ^ Illu^rated. 

FLOWEI^S: Every woman loves flowers, 

How to Grow Them t)ut few succeed in growing 

By Eben E. Rcxford them. With^ the help so 

clearly given in this book no 
one need fail. ^ It treats mainly of indoor flowers and plants 
^"those for window gardening ; all about their seledtion, care, 
soil, air, light, warmth, etc. ^ The chapter on table decora- 
tion alone is worth the price of the book. ^ While the sub- 
jed of flowers is quite thoroughly covered, the ^le used is 
plain, simple, and free from all technicalities. 

DANCING A complete in^udor, beginning with 

By Marguerite Wilson the fir^ positions and ^eps and leading 
up to the square and round dances, 
^ It contains a full Hit of calls for all of the square dances, 
and the appropriate music for each figure, the etiquette of 
the dances, and 1 00 figures for the german. ^ It is unusu 
ally well illustrated by a large number of original drawings. 
^ Without doi'bt the beit book on the subic(5l« 

M 



ASTROLOGY If you wish to obtain a horoscope of 
By M. M. Macgregor your entire life, or if you would like to 
know in what business or profession you 
will be^ succeeds what friends you should make, whom you 
should marry, the kind of a person to choose for a business 
partner, or the time of the month in which to begin an 
enterprise, you will find these and hundreds of other vital 
que^ions solved in this book by the science of Apology. 

PHYSIOGNOMY How can we judge whether a man 
By Lclla Lomax niay be tru^ed to handle money for 

us? ^ How can a woman analyze 
a man who would marry her ? ^ Partly by words, partly 
by voice, partly by reputation, but more than all by looks — 
the shape of the head, the set of the jaw, the line of the 
mouth, the glance of the eye. ^ Physiognomy as explained 
in this book shows clearly how to read charadler with every 
point explained by illu^ations and photographs. 

GRAPHOLOGY % Do you know that every 

How to Read Character time you write five or 

from Handwriting ^ix lines you furnish a 

By Clifford Howard complete record of your 

charader? Anyone who 
under^ands Graphology can tell by simply examining your 
handwriting ju^ what sort of a person you are. ^ There is 
no method of charader reading that is more intere^ng, more 
trusTrworthy, and more valuable than that of Graphology, 
cind it is the aim of this volume to enable anyone to become 
a ma^er of this mo^ fascinating art 

t9 



CURIOUS FACTS Why do you raise your hat to a 
By Clifford Howard lady ? and v/hy are you always 

careful to offer the right hand and 
not the left ? ^ Is there a good reason for the buttons on 
the sleeve of your coat? ^ How did your family name 
originate ? ^ Is it true that it takes nine tailors to make a 
man, and if so, why, forsooth ? ^ These and scores of 
equally intere^ing que^ions find answers here. Open it at 
any page and you will see something you have wanted to 
know all your life. 

PRACTICAL PALMISTRY The hand shows the man. 
By Henry Frith but many who believe in 

palmistry have found no 
ready access to its principles. ^ This Kttle guide to it is com- 
plete, tru^worthy, and yet simple in arrangement. ^ With 
this book and a little pradice anyone may read characTier 
surely, recall pa^ events, and foreca^ the future. ^ Fully 
illu^ated. 

CIVICS s This book answers a multitude 

What Every Citizen of que^ons of intere^ to every- 
Should Know ^P^- ^ ^t gives intelligent, con 

By George Lewis ^^^^» ^^^ complete information 

on such topics as the Monroe 
Dodtrine, Behring Sea Controversy, Extradition Treaties, 
Basis of Taxation, and fully explains the meaning of Habeas 
Corpus, Free Coinage, Civil Service, Au^ralian Ballot, and 
a great number of nther equally intere^ing subjedts. 

^3 



LAW, AND HOW TO Mo^ legal difficulties arise 

KEEP OUT OF IT f^om ignorance of the minor 

By Paschal H. Coggins, Esq. po^^its of law. ^ This book 

furnishes to the busy man and 
woman knowledge of ju^ such points as are mo^ likely to 
arise in every-day affairs, and thus proteds them again^ 
mental worry and financial loss. ^ Not only is this informa- 
tion liberally given, but every point is so explained and 
illu^rated that the reader wall not only underhand the law 
on the subjed, but cannot fail to remember it. 

CLASSICAL DlCTiONARY AH literature abounds 
By Edward S. Ellis, A. M. in classical allusions, but 

many do not underhand 
their meaning, ^ The force of an argument or the beauty 
of an iiiu^ation is therefore often lo^. ^ To avoid this, 
everyone should have at hand a complete didionary such as 
this. ^ It contains all the classical allusions worth knowing, 
and they are so ready of access as to require Kttle or no 
time in looking up. 

PLUTARCH'S LIVES Plutarch was the mo^ famous 

By Edward S. Ellis, A. M. biographer and one of the moil 

delightful essayi^s who ever 
Mved. ^ To him we are indebted for an intimate acquaint- 
ance vAt\\ many famous Greeks and Romans who made 
hi^ory and who ^11 live. ^ This book is a condensed form 
of the original *' Lives." ^ All the personages likely to be 
inquired about are mentioned, and wh^t is told of them is 
juA what one most wishes to know. 

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